Court of Last Resort Montgomery Texas

The judge is a fifty year lawyer named Sidney Ravkind who lives in Montgomery, Texas. HIs parents wanted him to be a Rabbi. HIs Rabbi wanted him to be a comedian, so he became a lawyer. He graduated from University of Texas Law School with highest honors in 1960. He was a Chancellor, a member of Order of the Coif, and  Student Editor of the Law Review. He served as law clerk to Chief Justice Robert Calvert and then Judge Simon Sobeloff who was Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit. He joined the Mandell & Wright Law Firm in 1962 and became its managing partner in 1975. Under his stewardship that Firm recruited Steve Susman, Gary McGowan, Bill White, Randy Wilson, Terry Oxford, Bob Rapp, to name just a few, and constructed a formidable force specializing in anti-trust, securities and personal injjury litigation. He opted to remain with the Firm when its business litigation section departed until 1994 when his then partners decided to terminate his 20 year rule and formed Ravkind & Littlepage which in 1999 became The Ravkind Firm. It is of some interest that his former partners put Mandell & Wright, which was one of the oldest plaintiffs' firm in the State, into Chapter 7 liquidation on what would have been its approximate 70th birthday. In 2006, the judge joined Loya & Associates as Special Counsel. The judge has served as lead counsel in numerous complex litigation matters both at trial and appeal levels. His brother William Ravkind, who is a successful Dallas lawyer, claims that the judge's major flaw is his great capacity to make people feel stupid. The judge has always denied possessing such a trait but admits to encountering difficulty in communicating with a number of lawyers and judges. Indeed, the judge does not assert that the judges who frequently distort the law are stupid. Rather, he believes that most are simply driven by bias and the notion that they must judge harshly to prove they are qualified to be a judge.