Champion of Justice

WE CAUGHT UP WITH prominent lawyer Lewis S. “Mike” Eidson, president and senior partner of Colson Hicks Eidson in Coral Gables to learn more about his work with the American Association of Justice and the recent award he won that salutes his decades of work as a dedicated trial lawyer.

Congratulations on the Leonard Ring Champion of Justice Award from the American Association for Justice (AAJ). Tell us about the award!

I became a member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (Now AAJ) in 1975 when I joined the prestigious firm Colson Hicks Eidson. My partner, Bill Colson, had been President of the Association in 1963. ATLA was the most important and largest trial bar in the world with 50,000 member lawyers in all 50 states, Canada, Australia, and England.

ATLA was established in 1948, and its headquarters are in Washington, D.C. It was founded to protect the constitutional right to trial by jury and to protect our clients’ access to the courthouse and their right to hold wrongdoers fully accountable.

In 2000, I was elected an officer of ATLA and served in that capacity for five years before being elected president in 2006 in Seattle. I worked very hard to serve the Association and to protect our clients’ rights, traveling to 40 states.

On the day I was elected, we held a vote at the convention to change our name to the American Association for Justice, and it was successful. The reason we changed the name was, we were not just an association for trial lawyers, but we were fighting for justice for our clients.

The Leonard Ring Champion of Justice Award is AAJ’s most prestigious award and is given annually by the Association to someone with high integrity who has done an extraordinary amount of work for justice. The award has been given about 35 times, so with 35,000 members, you can see how proud I was to receive it. I tried more than 200 cases in my career, most of them before juries. I have written and taught about trial law over 100 times across the country. I underwrite a trial seminar for two weeks at Emory University Law School each year, PHOTOGRAPHS which every student is required to take in BY ALEX MARKOW the second year. I have given, with my wife Margaret, more than 100 scholarships to students for law school at four schools.

What do you advocate for as an AAJ member?

Trial lawyers have been at the forefront of helping fight tobacco, asbestos, dangerous pharmaceuticals, chemicals that pollute our water, dangerous and defective products, and the like. AAJ is a place where lawyers can join together to learn about new problems to be addressed and to be educated. We also protect the right to bring cases like these by working with state and congressional legislators.

What are some highlights of your work with AAJ over the years?

During my year as president we changed our name, which is something that needed to be done; we sold our building in Georgetown and moved closer to the Capitol; we fought for congressional candidates who would protect the right to trial by jury and were successful in most of the races we entered; and we held the first Democratic Presidential Debate in Chicago which included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.

You’ve left a legacy as a trial lawyer. How are you currently extending that legacy with Sanctuary of the Arts?

Sanctuary of the Arts is about supporting the arts at the highest level. We preserve important spaces, converting them into places for arts and culture. They are community cultural spaces. We provide affordable theaters of the highest quality for other cultural organizations in the city. We also produce our own shows. We give artists an excellent place to perform and provide young people a quality education in the arts. We provide quality entertainment for the community throughout the year.

Since opening in 2021, more than 170 shows have been presented at the Sanctuary’s three theaters. Before we opened, there was very little dance presented in Coral Gables. Now, we are the largest presenter of dance in the city and we have an international pre-professional dance school which educates more than 40 young dancers a year, giving them a place to perform and working with them to find professional jobs throughout the world.

We have opened a small dance school in Rio de Janeiro and produced shows in Paraguay and Colombia and presented a full evening ballet called Carnival of the Animals in Mexico City. We have presented some of the greatest artists in the world, such as the famed violinist Joshua Bell.

The work I have done for AAJ and the Sanctuary has been an opportunity for me to give back for all of the opportunities that have been given to me and my family.