Family of Ogden lawyers not brief

OGDEN -- The proliferation of lawyers from the Richards-Allen family continues, with 10 now practicing law, all but one in the Ogden area.

"After getting your bachelor's degree, it's either get a job or find a school to keep going to," Bernie Allen quipped about the road to law school.

The latest addition is Brittany Richards, daughter of Randy Richards, newly minted in the recent mass swearing-in ceremony at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. Some 200 lawyers took the oath two weeks ago upon passing their state bar exams.

She just won her first felony case, getting charges dropped in a drug case via a suppression motion finding Fourth Amendment search and seizure violations by police.

Prosecutors dropped the case voluntarily without even challenging the suppression motion.

"After the motion succeeded I told them she wrote it," said proud father Randy Richards. "It was just three days after she was sworn in."

The tree

Randy Richards is cousin to fellow lawyers Reed Richards, Bernie Allen, Rock Allen, and Jennifer Clark; uncle to fellow lawyers Brandon Richards, Shawn Richards and Jason Richards, Reed's three sons ...

OK, got to be an easier way to lay out the family tree. It begins with progenitors Maurice and Winn Richards, brothers, and Merle Allen, a former Ogden mayor who married their sister Dahrl.

Maurice Richards, who passed away earlier this year, begat Reed who in turn has raised three boys, all lawyers, the aforementioned Brandon, Shawn and Jason.

Merle and Dahrl begat Bernie, Rock and Jennifer.

The late Winn Richards, an eye doctor and former legislator, begat Randy, who subsequently begat Brittany.

Also in the mix is the late Jack Richards, cousin to Maurice and Winn. Jack and Maurice practiced law together, Maurice serving as Weber County Attorney during the '50s and '60s at the same time Jack was the Ogden city attorney. Jack's son Royce works as an attorney and CPA currently.

Mostly Ogden

All but Shawn Richards, part of a large Salt Lake City firm, practice in the Ogden area. Jason Richards' law school graduation is still pending, but he's working as an intern at uncles Bernie Allen and Randy Richards' firm, which was founded by Maurice when he wasn't establishing the Weber County Public Defenders Association.

"Maurice acted like it was so much fun," said Bernie Allen during a recent gathering for a lawyerly family portrait. "It was to him," Reed Richards said as the consensus emerged that Maurice inspired the still-evolving trend of lawyers in the family.

"He always said he never sent out a bill to a client," Reed said of his father. "Which is hard to believe." He apparently was always paid in kind, or in trade of services, or was paid up front, said Reed, who followed in his father's footsteps as Weber County Attorney before serving eight years as chief criminal deputy in the Utah Attorney General's Office.

Bernie Allen described the patriarch Maurice as a horizontal thinker, attacking a problem from a number of different directions, as opposed to more rigid, or vertical thinking.

He also had praise for Jack Richards, who served as city attorney during father Merle's years as Ogden mayor in the early 1960s. "Jack was a miracle ... his advice always won out during city council meetings. Dad had to ask him at one point if he knew everything. Jack said, 'It's not that I know everything, it's just that I know more than the people in that room.' "

Remembering Caine

The clan also assigns some of the blame for all the law careers to the late John Caine, one of Maurice Richards' law partners along with son Reed beginning in the 1970s. Bernie Allen was also a partner then.

"My first day on the job, Maurice and Reed sent me to the courthouse to watch John take a case to trial," he said of Caine, local legend known for his rumpled appearance, a rotund man who refused to wear suspenders, contrasted by flamboyant oration.

"First, he accidentally knocked over the prosecutor's water glass, spilling everywhere. And then his pants almost came down. But then he started speaking. You're spellbound."

"I don't know what the lure is," Reed Richards said of the legal evolution of the younger members of the extended family. "Things were kind of glamorous I guess, with the big cases going to trial. It probably gets their attention."

The lure is apparently spreading outside the Ogden area.

Reed Richard's sister Sheree Reed, of Salt Lake City, has a son Spencer Reed, in law school at an Eastern college. Her daughter, Jenny, married a lawyer, Richard Schow, now practicing in Las Vegas.

Jared Richards, a son of Reed Richards' brother, the late Brett Richards, is a lawyer in Las Vegas, turning to the law after graduating in music and drama at Southern Utah University in Cedar City.

Bernie Allen, Jennifer Clark, Reed Richards and sons Brandon and Jason, and Randy Richards and daughter Brittany all practice out of offices a few doors away from each other in the row of law offices across the street from the Ogden Municipal Building downtown.

Reed Richards' oldest son Brandon has three sons, the oldest 6 years old. Probably too soon to tell.