Richard W. Rodriguez
A guided tour of the former home of Fount Oxsheer — the forgotten cattle king — and his wife, Mary, led by current owner, attorney Steven Laird, is well worth a half hour on this day in the early part of 2025.
The Near Southside landmark today serves as the office of Laird and partner Seth McCloskey, recently named among the nation’s top plaintiff attorneys in the Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers list. Both name partners were honored for excellence in personal injury, trucking and wrongful death matters. Mr. Laird and Mr. McCloskey have been recognized on the prestigious list since 2022.
The home was built in 1916 and was refurbished by Laird, who bought it in 2017.
Laird, a member of Fort Worth Inc.'s The 400 — the most influential people in Fort Worth — would also like to see a scrubbing of certain practices and a renewal of the standard of ethics among personal injury attorneys, a field in which he has built his livelihood over the past 45 years.
Laird references Bates v. State Bar of Arizona (1977), a U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld lawyers’ rights to advertise their services. Over time, this has led to the emergence of wacky, over-the-top TV commercials that exploit consumers. When I bring up those ads, Laird winces.
Geofencing is another growing tactic in which attorneys are able to use location-based technology to send a social media ad to a device when a smartphone enters a defined boundary, like, for example, within certain distance from a hospital emergency room.
Laird has long-standing reputation for striving for the highest ethical principles, having been appointed to the Texas Supreme Court’s Professional Ethics Committee and its Task Force Committee on Advertising and Referral Fees in the past. In 2021, the Tarrant County Bar Association honored Laird with the prestigious Blackstone Award, presented to an attorney whose career embodies ethical ideals, courage, and service to the legal profession. Last year, Laird was awarded the Lola Wright Foundation Award, presented in recognition of outstanding public service in advancing and enhancing legal ethics in Texas.
Laird tells the story of being invited a couple of years ago to give an induction speech to newly license lawyers.
“The topic was probably not what they expected — reputation,” Laird says. “What I left them with was something that I strongly believe in: If you take care of your reputation, your reputation will take care of you.
“You can interpret that a number of different ways, but what I was hoping to convey is that reputation is something you can't buy. You’ve got to earn it, and it takes time to develop. Even so, it can be lost overnight.”