Breaking the Stereotype of a Typical Attorney Monday, November 1, 2010
PLANO -- Attorneys are oftentimes compared to sharks or bloodsucking critters of one make or another. Plano attorney Ike Vanden Eykel is breaking the stereotype.
Vanden Eykel received the state’s top award for meritorious service to family law recently at the Advanced Family Law Course, the nation’s largest gathering of divorce lawyers.
The Sam Emison Award, named after a former Harris County judge who helped to create family law in the state, is bestowed upon a person “who has demonstrated a significant commitment and made significant contributions to the practice of family law in the State of Texas.”
Larry Upshaw, owner of Professional Solutions Group, believes Vanden Eykel is a perfect candidate for this award.
“He is one of the nation’s top family law attorneys and president of the Dallas Bar Association for 2010,” Upshaw said. “He has distinguished himself for his intense advocacy of the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program, which provides free legal assistance to the poor.”
Vanden Eykel has for 21 years been a managing partner of Koons Fuller, the southwest’s largest exclusively family law firm with 27 attorneys in four North Texas locations, including Plano.
Douglas Harrison, partner at Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP, has practiced law as a colleague of Vanden Eykel’s for 37 years.
“We were fortunate to have some cases together early in our careers and have been opposing counsel in many, many cases,” Harrison said. “It is a pleasure to work with Ike because he follows through. I do not have any difficulty relying on what he tells me. He exemplifies a strong sense of professionalism and has actually enhanced the practice of family law by setting high standards.”
Harrison says one thing he appreciates about Vanden Eykel is his sense of humor. “The practice of law is stressful, and I enjoy having cases with Ike because we can generally find something in the case that can help lighten the tone,” Harrison said.
Harrison said one of Vanden Eykel’s talents as a lawyer is his ability to take the complex and make it simple. “He aims for the essence of the matter rather quickly and delivers a succinct oral and written product,” Harrison said.
He said Vanden Eykel once told him that if he had his career to choose again, he might have become a minister. “With his effective style and brevity, I expect he would have made that a success as well,” Harrison said. “The reality is that being a successful family law attorney may not be so different than being a minister in many respects.”
Harrison admires Vanden Eykel’s ability to be a forward thinker.
“He has done that with his own individual practice, with his firm, with his involvement in the Dallas Bar Association and his own family life,” Harrison said. “During the last 37 years, family law has changed tremendously and has become much more complex. I believe that Ike anticipated many of those changes and has had a positive impact on many of the developing trends. His opinion is respected, and his receipt of the Sam Emison award is tangible confirmation of what he has done.”
Attorney Alicia Hernandez, director of the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program and the Dallas Bar Association director of community services, sees the difference Vanden Eykel has made in both the Plano and Dallas communities.
“Ike and his firm have been tremendously supportive of legal aid to the poor for many years,” Hernandez said. “They have donated over $242,000 to the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program since 1994. These funds make it possible for us to recruit and train more attorneys to take cases for low-income clients.”
Hernandez holds high appreciation and respect for Vanden Eykel because he goes above and beyond his call of duty to give back as a community member.
“Ike, his partners, and his associates do not stop there – they also volunteer their time and talents to take our clients’ family law cases,” Hernandez said.
She believes they are some of the most respected family lawyers in the community.
“To be able to offer low-income clients not only an attorney but real experts in their field is a wonderful gift,” Hernandez said. “Ike’s leadership has helped DVAP grow into the program it is today – a program that is recognized nationally and statewide as an example for other legal aid organizations to follow. We couldn’t have gotten here without him.”
Larry Miller, president of North Dallas Bank of Texas, first met Vanden Eykel in 2000 through a professional connection at the bank.
“Given his reputation as an industry expert, a published author and as one of our nation’s most highly regarded and respected family law professionals, my expectations for our first meeting included a feeling that he might be too busy, tense, somewhat distracted and aloof. I couldn’t have been more wrong,” Miller said. “During that very first meeting and all of our times together since, Ike has made me feel as if I am the most important person on the planet at that particular time. I believe he is able to do this because at that moment, in his eyes, I am.”
Miller said one thing he noticed about Vanden Eykel right away is his ability to make someone feel as if they truly matter.
“Whenever you are around Ike, his focus is on you, your needs and how he might serve you or assist you in filling your need. In my experience and observation, Ike treats everyone in this manner,” Miller said. “I know this because I know his firm and his associates, his partners and his employees. And I know how he treats them – how he cares, how he listens, how he coaches and encourages and cheers people on. And I know how they feel about Ike.”
Miller believes Vanden Eykel to be trusted, admired and respected by all.
“If you judge him to be successful, you must first recognize him as a servant,” Miller said. “Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that ‘The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.’ I’m certain Emerson would have loved Ike Vanden Eykel – Ike definitely has made a difference.”
Vanden Eykel reaches out in areas where he can to give back to the community, but he does not do it for a reward.
“I was totally surprised at being named the recipient of the Sam Emison Award in August,” Vanden Eykel said. “This is the highest award in our field in Texas, and it was extremely humbling to be given the award.”
He loves what he does because of the overall outcome that he fights for each day: to help people.
“Family law touches people and families directly,” Vanden Eykel said. “We are dealing on a daily basis with family tragedies, and we are able to render a service that our clients need desperately. We are able to make a big difference in lives.”
Vanden Eykel thinks that family law is so rewarding because he deals directly with clients and his work comes at one of the most stressful times in his clients’ lives.
“We can have a very significant impact on the direction they will be going once our work is completed, and we can see firsthand the effect of our efforts. It is very gratifying,” Vanden Eykel said. “Working directly with so many people in family law has given me a strong conviction that every citizen is entitled to access to our legal system. It is regrettable that for many people that access is a myth unless our profession is willing to make it happen with our volunteer efforts.”
Vanden Eykel said that it is difficult to imagine how desperate one would feel if they had a legal problem or needed protection from the court system but had no way to afford the process.
“If you cannot protect your family with our court system, then there is a very large risk that a person can become detached from our system, and more problems will begin to arise,” Vanden Eykel said. “If I were able to improve one aspect of family law, it would be to instill in more attorneys that we have a duty to aid our community and its members. That extends to our time, our talent and our resources.”
He graduated law school intending to be a trial attorney, but that wasn’t his destiny.
“I started doing some trial work family law very early in my career and was fortunate to have some early successes, and I found it very rewarding,” Venden Eykel said. “Family law grew to be a larger percentage of my practice each year, and I finally started doing it 100 percent of my time in about 1985.”
Vanden Eykel thinks the bad image many people have of lawyers is self-inflicted by a small minority of the members of his profession.
“I believe it comes from people seeing lawyers as having advantages and opportunities but experiencing individuals who take and do not give back,” Vanden Eykel said. “Our profession can and should help the less fortunate among us in our communities. It is a privilege to practice law, and with that privilege comes responsibilities; one is to take care of the people who cannot afford to have legal representation. If we attend to our responsibilities, the image of our profession will take care of itself.”
While the law industry is hopefully improving and aiming for ideals such as Vanden Eykel’s, he hopes that more people will begin to trust attorneys, though he advises them to be careful in their choosing.
“I would tell people to make sure they are comfortable with the attorney they choose before they go forward in any legal matter,” Vanden Eykel said. “Pick one who is right for you and who will be there when you have problems. Take the time to do your homework, and interview the person before you make the hiring decision.”
Vanden Eykel has always had two main goals in his career: to be known as an honorable attorney and to be considered one of the best at what he does.
“I hope to have a lasting impact on our practice of law, and I want my firm to continue successfully long after I am gone,” Vanden Eykel said. “It has been a great privilege to practice law in Texas, and I look forward to continuing for many years. I value the experience I have gained and hope to continue working towards my goals in the future.”
Your Spouse (or Ex) Has a Substance Abuse Problem? Reprinted from the Denton Business Chronicle Wednesday, November 3, 2010 DENTON -- Charlie Sheen may be a fine actor, but he is every woman’s idea of a nightmare husband…and ex-husband.
The 45-year-old TV sitcom star has a long history of threatening or battering wives and girlfriends while in the grip of drugs and alcohol. His father, actor Martin Sheen, has pretty much given up on him, his friends have wondered when the demons will claim him for good, and he and his third wife are hurling divorce petitions at each other.
Sheen’s latest escapade was to be found naked and incoherent with a porn actress in a suite at The Plaza Hotel in New York. He was supposedly on a family vacation with his second ex-wife and their two children when the late-night incident took place and Sheen was hauled off to a psychiatric hospital.
It’s that intersection of domestic responsibility and addiction that is so destructive. Charlie Sheen may be one of the richest and most famous people to mess up their family lives with substance abuse, but he has plenty of company. In North Texas alone, many thousands of people suffer from one kind of addiction or another, and a large percentage of them are married or divorced parents.
At Koons Fuller, we’ve heard all the stories about the indignities perpetrated against loving family members by the addicted; instances of physical or sexual abuse, infidelity and thievery. There’s the one about the ex-wife who borrowed her ex’s car to take the kids out for a drive and wound up selling it to buy methamphetamine. Or the father who stole his children’s college fund so that he and his girlfriend could do cocaine all weekend.
People can do mean and despicable things to satisfy their habits, and it’s when children are involved that the situation is especially precarious. What do you do when your ex shows up on Friday afternoon, just a bit tipsy from happy hour, to pick up your kids for the weekend? If it’s the first time, you direct him or her to come back after sobering up. If it has happened before, you may want to take action and work with an attorney and the court to regulate visitation.
With the holidays coming, you may be faced with having to keep a spouse or ex-spouse from coming unhinged due to drugs or alcohol. The holidays have their own set of stressors that can send someone intent on recovery into a tailspin. Too often those people are able to convince loved ones that if they just loved the addict enough, these destructive tendencies would go away.
Now you can love the addict. But for your benefit and that of your family, you have to accept that you didn’t cause the problem, you can’t fix it and you wish that person well. More specifically, if you are entertaining during the holidays you can do the following:
• Plan alternate activities that take the place of drinking or drugging, especially physical games and mental challenges.
• Especially if drinking is the problem, offer some exotic non-alcoholic drinks with fruit and plenty of sweetness. Often the craving for alcohol is simply a need for sugar.
• Know the triggers – people, places and things – that remind the addict of the fun he or she had when using.
• Be mindful of those who are grieving a loss. People often use the memory of something bad that happened to them to motivate them to sink into drink or drugs.
• If you are serving alcohol yourself, control the output and don’t let the party go on too long.
• If your children or others are embarrassed by the drug-fueled antics of a parent, remind them that they didn’t cause this behavior, they don’t control it and they can’t cure it.
• If people at your house overindulge, have a plan ready for enticing them to get sober before taking on traffic.
You might feel responsible for the substance abuse problems of your spouse or ex. But don’t believe it, because that’s the rationalization of the offending party offloading his or her problems onto you. So often at Koons Fuller we have had a prospective client say in an off-hand way during our initial consultation, “Yes, he drinks a little bit.”
Then it comes out that the husband and father of her children beats her regularly, takes money meant to pay their mortgage and occasionally frequents prostitutes. So much about this is wrong, and the wife and mother of his children has the right to protect herself and the responsibility to protect their kids.
Those rights and responsibilities are more pronounced during the holidays, but they are important to the family all year.
Lawyers Use Facebook in Jury Selection: Robertson Tuesday, November 9, 2010 PLANO -- "It's amazing what people will post publicly," says Plano divorce attorney Rick Robertson, acknowledging a trend of lawyers checking out Facebook pages before selecting a jury.
Attorneys have admitted that they look at the Facebook pages of witnesses and the opposing side in a case, but using Facebook to evaluate the social mores of potential jurors is new.
"These things can come back to bite you," Robertson says. "Through what people post of Facebook you can get some perspective on how they would feel about excessive drinking by one of the parties, or about extramarital affairs."
Just Call Dallas Law Firm Koons Fuller Now Thursday, November 11, 2010 DALLAS -- Call it a divorce of convenience if you will. The Dallas law firm of Koons, Fuller, Vanden Eykel & Robertson is divorcing itself from its own name and choosing a shorter title: Koons Fuller.
Even though attorneys Ike Vanden Eykel and Rick Robertson are two of the law firm’s founding partners, the pair is happy to see their names scrapped from the title.
“With so many names and personalities working for our diverse clientele, Koons Fuller has become effective shorthand for a powerhouse in family law," said Vanden Eykel, the firm's CEO. "We just formalized what most people dealing with divorce in this area already call the firm."
Apparently, Vanden Eykel and Robertson have no ego issues at all, a trait that often leads to a happy marriage. This firm should know. It even put out a statement saying something to the effect that “this was the triumph of business reality over personal ego.”
Here’s to a long and happy marriage, Koons Fuller. The firm has 27 attorneys serving clients in North Texas.
Now if only the rest of those alphabet-soup law firms in North Texas will follow suit. Their receptionists would surely appreciate it.
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