What is Atticus Finch Day?

Atticus Finch Day was born as a hopeful answer to a courthouse community that had become so fractured and dysfunctional that lives were being affected. Political vendettas, personal discord, email scandals, runaway grand juries, courts of inquiry, animosity between the District Attorney’s Office and the County Attorney’s Office, tension between prosecutors and defense attorneys, rampant rumor and gossip, all contributed to a pretty unpleasant place to work.

Over the past 14 years in Brazos County, attorneys gather, clad in seersucker apparel, to pause and reflect on the ideals embodied in the character of Harper Lee’s fictional southern lawyer, Atticus Finch. Not surprisingly, we call it “Atticus Finch Day.” We come together as a bar, as colleagues, and as friends, to re-commit ourselves to the nobility of our profession and to representing our clients zealously and ethically without tearing each other apart in the process.