Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Thursday, September 17, 2015

 

Page 1

 

American Bar Association to Present Service Award to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Allen Webster Jr.

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

The American Bar Association will present its 2015 Difference Makers Award to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Allen J. Webster Jr., the ABA said yesterday.

Webster, 73, is to receive the award during the “GPSolo 2015 Solo & Small Firm Summit: Strategies for Success” Sept. 25 in Boston. “This award honors an attorney living or deceased who made a significant contribution to the legal profession through service to the profession,” the association said in a release.

The judge was appointed by then-Gov. Gray Davis in 2001, after having served as a Compton Municipal Court commissioner since 1995. He served for a time as assistant supervising judge for the South Central District, a post to which he was appointed following the death of Judge Jack Morgan in 2006.

Before becoming a commissioner, he logged over 23 years in general law practice, handling criminal defense, family law, probate, personal injury, and other matters at various law firms and as a sole practitioner.

He is a former president of the John M. Langston Bar Association, the California Association of Black Lawyers and the National Bar Association. He has served on the executive committee of the Law Practice Management Section of the State Bar of California, as a founding committee member of the Los Angeles County Bar’s Indigent Criminal Defense Committee and Panel, on the ABA Task Force on Minorities and the Justice System and its Council on Racial and Ethnic Justice, on the State Bar of California’s Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and on the Los Angeles County Solo and Small Law Firm Section Executive Committee. 

Webster is a past president of Southwestern Law School’s Alumni Board and served as a member of the Board of Trustees at the school. He was named by the school’s Black Law Students Association this year as its Outstanding Alumnus.

He is the recipient of the National Bar Association Wiley Branton Award in 2006, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the John M. Langston Bar Association in 2010 and the National Bar Association Hall of Fame in 2012.

 Currently, the judge serves as a member of the State of California’s Access and Fairness Advisory Committee; member of the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Fairness and Access Committee; member of the ABA Judicial Division’s Standing Committee on Minorities in the Judiciary and ABA Coalition on Racial and Ethnic Justice Stand your Ground Task Force; judicial advisor to the California Association of Black Lawyers; member of the executive committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Indigent Criminal Defense Panel; co-chair of the Convention Committee for the National Bar Association and board member for the Langston bar association.

A native of New Orleans, he has lived in California since his family moved to South Central Los Angeles when he was 2 years old, and he attended public and parochial schools. After graduating from Centennial High School in Compton, he attended Compton College and Pepperdine University, graduating in 1963.

After a brief stint in the military, he commenced working for the Bank of America as a loan officer. After two years, he became a deputy probation officer for the County of Los Angeles.

He enrolled in the evening division at Southwestern and graduated in 1971.

 

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