Super Lawyers - Mid-South 2014

BRIEFS
It’s the middle of July and Brian H. Ratcliff is one
month into his term as president of the Arkansas
Bar Association.
“Or another way to look at it is I’m one-twelfth
done,” he says.

Ratcliff, 52, is actually very glad to have the gig. It’s the fulfillment of a promise he made to a now-departed friend—the same friend whose last advice helped guide Ratcliff through the biggest transition of his professional career: a move to PPGMR Law.

“It’s a good story, a long time in the making,”
he says.

Ratcliff practiced for 24 years at Shackleford, Phillips & Ratcliff in El Dorado, Arkansas doing defense litigation mostly: insurance, workers’ comp and environmental defense in some oil contamination cases. His partner Dennis Shackleford had once been president of the state bar association and always wanted Ratcliff to follow in his footsteps.

“I actually considered doing it before, had a
chance, but it just didn’t feel right in my heart,”
Ratcliff says. “Dennis was a little disappointed. I told
him, ‘Please don’t be. I promise I’ll do it, eventually.’”
Eventually arrived in 2012, when Ratcliff
ran unopposed to become president-elect, the
necessary step before assuming the presidency,
which he did at the bar association’s annual
meeting in June.

Shackleford, who passed away in February
at age 83, got to see his protégé introduced as
president-elect in 2013. “It was one of the last
times he saw all of his colleagues. He was very
proud of me, and I was very happy,” says Ratcliff.

Ratcliff’s last good conversation with
Shackleford was in December 2013; he needed
some counsel from his old friend.

During his years of environmental defense
litigation, Ratcliff had grown close to Alan Perkins,
“I quickly learned that when there was
commercial litigation there, Brian Ratcliff was
likely to be involved,” says Perkins. “Brian and I
worked on joint defense groups together several
times, and our strategies always seemed to
naturally align. We had talked about joining
forces several times over the years.”
Just after Thanksgiving last year, Perkins asked
again. Shackleford had retired and was ailing.
Ratcliff was the only partner left at his firm, with
majority interest of the stock, and an associate,
Chase Carmichael.

“I talked to my wife, then went to see Dennis
Shackleford,” Ratcliff says. “I went over to his house,
we drank wine and talked, and his last advice to me
was, ‘Life is all about change, and this sounds like a
good one. You should try and make it.’”
So he reached an agreement with PPGMR Law
to join as a partner in March. He would make the
move without actually moving. “Part of the deal
was I stay here in El Dorado, my associate stays
here, the staff stays here, I join their law firm and
they now have an El Dorado office,” says Ratcliff.

His upcoming role as president of the state bar association also had something to do with his decision; it’s easier to cover all of your bases at a firm with 12 attorneys like PPGMR versus one with only two.

GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES
BRIAN H. RATCLIFF TAKES ON A NEW FIRM AND THE ARKANSAS BAR PRESIDENCY
BY JERRY GRILLO

Now Ratcliff can take the time to do what
a president does, which often means dealing
with the leftovers. “You inherit somebody else’s
agenda. It happens to everybody,” he says. “You
inherit some things and you start some things
that you’re not going to finish.”
The work he’s inherited includes an effort to
fix attorney licensing rules through the state
Supreme Court, and an ongoing search for better
liability insurance for bar members. “Sounds easy,
but it’s turned into a bear,” Ratcliff says. “This one
will probably come to a head during my year.”
Then there are the hijackers. That’s what
Ratcliff calls them, “hijackers.” Every bar
president has at least one, he says. “Something
that comes up in your year in office that is
unexpected and takes up a lot of your time,
and you really can’t plan for it. Last year it was
a dispute with LexisNexis over who owned the
Arkansas code.”
And during his presidency? Ratcliff has
a guess. The Arkansas General Assembly’s
schedule only allows substantive legislation to
be introduced every other year, so bar presidents
have a 50-50 chance of serving during a session,
when new laws are proposed, discussed and
passed or not. Ratcliff’s presidential term is one
such year.

During the 2013 session, state lawmakers considered a tort reform measure to amend the state constitution that essentially would have given the legislature the power of rulemaking for Arkansas’s judicial branch. The state bar, of course, opposed it. The legislation didn’t make it out of committee. But Ratcliff has a feeling.