March 2015 (updated May 2024)

Dear Visitor,

I must first confess to you that I've put up this website reluctantly.  No longer could I ignore that a website may now be necessary to signal the very existence of a law practice.  But the dilemma is that while a commercial website may be evidence of a practice’s beating heart, it can also be breath’s fog on the mirror.  So now, the website established, what comfortably to say here of myself and my practice that can halfway meet website expectations and still be of reliable value to you, the visitor?

That does not come easily because I don’t believe, and suspect that you may not either, that information offered by a lawyer in a self-marketing medium like this provides a wholly reliable basis for selecting a lawyer.  (That no doubt is why the Missouri rules on lawyer advertising require a lawyer’s ad emphatically to state, “The choice of a lawyer is an important decision and should not be based solely upon advertisements.”)  All this said, I do not hesitate to add that some excellent lawyers, attuned to the competitive realities in their fields of practice, quite understandably tout their services through websites and other media.

How then, other than by resort to self-promoting presentations, to investigate a lawyer when in need of legal services?  The choice of a lawyer is important because trust at various levels is involved.  For instance, the esoteric nature of services a lawyer provides can oftentimes hide from a client’s immediate awareness the quality of the services received.  So how then to be reasonably assured that the lawyer you choose is possessed of the ability, will, and dedication to address forthrightly your needs?  A method of choice, if available to you, may be to get a referral from a trusted confidant — optimally, someone of sound judgment who’s had some experience within the legal community on a matter similar to the one for which you are seeking legal assistance.

Additionally, there are some primary sources that can reveal certain things about a lawyer’s work.  It may be learned if a Missouri lawyer has a record of or is being charged with misconduct by calling the state's Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel at 573-635-7400.  Further, if your need is for a litigation lawyer, you can find all a lawyer’s cases in the higher courts of the state and the federal systems — unfiltered for favorable display — by availing of the free Google Scholar database (https://scholar.google.com/).  The search there can be made by checking “Case law” and then entering in the search box the lawyer’s professionally-used name encased in quotation marks (so all my own cases — unfiltered — will come up through separate searches under “Tom Mendelson” and “Tom P. Mendelson”).

Turning to — for whatever it may be worth to you — my formal passage in law, it went thus:  graduated Washington University School of Law, 1966; associate then partner in St. Louis law firm of Luke, Cunliff, Wilson, Herr, Chavaux, and McCluggage, 1966-72, where I had the good fortune to be mentored by and work alongside extraordinary lawyers and staff; in law practice with friend and colleague Steven Edelstein in Rutland, Vermont, 1973-74; solo practitioner in St. Louis, 1975 to now (and onward as far as my intentions and destiny can take me).

I have a general practice of law.  It's been to my enduring gratitude to work for the folks who came my way and allowed me to serve them in a broad range of legal engagements.  The varied court work is in part exemplified by my advocacy in the appellate courts as referred to above.  In the non-court, counseling aspects of a general-practice, my work is also varied, spanning among other things the preparation of wills and trusts, general probate-avoidance planning, probate and trust administration, and formation and legal counseling of small businesses.

But above all, I wish always to remain mindful, more so now than ever, that I am both citizen and lawyer in a nation whose claim to justice for all rests on it being a functioning democracy beholden to the rule of law — a nation whose birth certificate declares, as it should never become trite to say, that we are all created as equals “with certain unalienable Rights,” among them “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Put another way, as is written in an essay by the philosopher Susan Neiman on the work of Immanuel Kant, a moral universe binds us all to the imperative of treating every human being "as an end and not as a means."*  I’ve long considered it to be a privilege of my law license to have had a role in the course of my practice, however inadequate to the need, to advocate for and otherwise to embrace persons seeking to vivify for themselves -- and for all of us -- these foundational conditions necessary to achieve lives lived in the fullness of all their possibilities.

My office is in a residential setting in St. Louis’s Clifton Heights neighborhood (Upper Dogtown or The Hill West when I want to put on airs).  With thanks to SEIU, Local 1, this is my 37th year here.  My office is steeped in hyper-informality, praised by some but for others lacking I’m sure in expected accouterments and messaging.  My affinity of course is strongly with those who like it here.  The informality is an idea about comfort only, and does not diminish in any degree the seriousness of the work undertaken.

So, yes, in fulfillment of what’s prompted this website, I am most thankfully still here, with undiminished zeal for the work undertaken.  Thus, the ongoing existence of my practice is hereby confirmed.  This being so, I would be pleased to hear from you to explore whether I can be the attorney to serve the legal needs that presumably landed you at my website (and thus vindicated it).  At the same time, I wish you the very best in the hands of whomever elsewhere you entrust to your legal needs.  Though circumspection is in order, there is no dearth of good lawyers.

Tom

*Susan Neiman, Essay, Vision of a World Liberated By Reason, N.Y. Times, May 2, 2024, at C1 & C4.