TAMPA, Fla. – Adams and Reese’s Tampa-based attorney Christopher A. Roach has been invited to join the prestigious William Reece Smith, Jr., Litigation American Inn of Court as a master member, the organization announced on July 13.
A member of the American Inns of Court (AIC), the Smith Inn and the AIC’s mission is to foster excellence in professionalism, ethics, civility and legal skills among judges, lawyers, academicians and law students in order to improve the quality, availability and efficiency of justice. Members agree to abide by a professional creed of the AIC and meet monthly in groups consisting of at least one member of the judiciary and a mix of senior, intermediate and newer lawyers.
Mr. Roach joined Adams and Reese in 2010 and currently serves as special counsel. A trial lawyer since 2001, he began his private practice in Texas after serving as a law clerk to the Hon. Sidney A. Fitzwater of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where the Court issued the first reported decision on the 12th Amendment to the Constitution in a case arising from the 2000 presidential election. Mr. Roach’s practice allows him to represent clients in a wide range of litigation matters, including breach of contract disputes, consumer protection matters, products liability defense and trucking accident defense, as well as complex foreclosure and real estate cases.
A double graduate of the University of Chicago, Mr. Roach earned his bachelor’s degree with general and special honors in 1996 and completed his J.D. in 2000. Mr. Roach is a member of the Florida Bar and the Texas Bar.
In the community, Mr. Roach received multiple awards for the Are You Safe Foundation, including the 2012 Lawyer of the Year Award for representing victims of domestic violence. He also volunteered his time from 2012-2014 to assist veterans seeking employment as co-chair of the Military Workforce and Retention Committee of the Greater Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce’s Military Affairs Council. He served as a member and vice chairman of the Hillsborough County Bar Grievance Committee from 2015-2017.
The Inn is named in honor of William Reece Smith, Jr., who served as interim president of the University of South Florida (1976-1977) and the American Bar Association (1980). Born in Athens, Tenn., in 1925, Mr. Smith grew up in Plant City, Fla., and received an athletic scholarship to the University of South Carolina where he was a quarterback for the Gamecocks and participated in the Reserve Officers training Corps (ROTC). He completed his bachelor’s degree in naval science in 1946 and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy following graduation. Following his military service, Smith attended the University of Florida College of Law and earned an LL.B. in 1949 with high honors and later became a Rhodes Scholar.
Mr. Smith rallied against then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s decision to cut federal funding to provide legal services to the poor and worked diligently to instill an adherence to good ethics into the young legal scholars at Stetson University, where he taught for more than 20 years. He died in 2013 at age 87.
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Adams and Reese (http://www.adamsandreese.com) is a multidisciplinary law firm with nearly 300 attorneys and advisors strategically located in 18 offices across 17 markets throughout the southern United States and Washington, D.C. The American Lawyer includes Adams and Reese on its distinguished list of the nation’s top law firms – The Am Law 200. The National Law Journal also includes the firm among the top 200 on the NLJ 500 list of the nation’s largest law firms.