Richard Hill Benes – 50th Reunion Essay

Richard Hill Benes

716 Cordova Street

San Diego, California 92107-4220

rbenes@cox.net

619-223-7700

Spouse(s): Cherri V. Benes (1993 -)

Child(ren): Savannah Lynne Benes

Education: University of Southern California, Gould School of Law, JD, 1976

Career: Certified Specialist in Appellate Law, Board of Legal Specialization of the State Bar of California

Avocations: The universe

College: Timothy Dwight

I am very grateful for a Yale degree. It has been a benefit throughout my post-graduate life and career. However, I may have chosen to attend the wrong university. In 1965 my heart yearned for science. It still does. But Yale did not ignite a passion for science. It may well have been my own fault, but I simply did not enjoy my science courses as much as my liberal arts courses.

So I majored in psychology, emphasizing physiological psychology as much as possible. Even so, in 1969, psychology did not seem like real science, and that ruled out post-graduate study in psychology.

Graduating without any vocational rudder, I tried business, working first as a management trainee at Chubb Corporation in Manhattan. After initial corporate training, I worked in the contract bond department, performing fundamental financial analysis. Then I was sent to Chubb’s data processing school for six months to learn the valuable skills of systems analysis and programming and to then serve as an interface with the investment department.

For selfish reasons, I left Chubb (which had invested generously in my training and treated me well) to join a small consulting firm whose major client was Bell Laboratories. Bell was a unique corporate environment with motivated people drawn from the 23 “operating companies” and with the best computers available anywhere. Still, I was unsatisfied in business.

In 1972, I decided to attend law school at the University of Southern California. I loved the academic challenge of the law; and I have practiced civil appellate law for 42 years. My career was launched by an externship with California Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk, a brilliant jurist. He helped me to be hired as a research and writs attorney for the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District, Division One, in San Diego. In 1978 I joined a law firm, Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch, where I became a partner; in 1984 I left Procopio to start my own small firm, Benes & Fiorello; and I have been a sole practitioner, working from a large home library, since 1990.

I enjoy being a generalist. I enjoy having the facts of a case come to me all “cut and baled” in a clerk’s transcript, a reporter’s transcript, and trial exhibits. I enjoy legal research, which has become much easier during my career. I enjoy writing. And the law suits my petrified superego.

I am now on the glide path to retirement from the practice of law. A sole practitioner cannot simply take down his shingle; some cases can last for decades. However, just as in 1969, I am without a plan. My only real hobby is the universe. As gratifying as my legal career has been, if I were able to start over, I would probably pursue a career in astrobiology.

The wisdom of age carries with it some remorse and pain. But I hope—a hope instilled by my late father—that my community has become a better place for my presence.