A Winning Attitude  
 
In the Courtroom, and in the Gym, Jack St. Clair Is Fueled by Competition  
 
By GEORGE O’BRIEN      
                   
To say that Jack St. Clair likes to compete would be a gross underestimate. Whether he’s in the courtroom, on the golf course, or in the gym lifting weights, he plays to win — and usually does. He likes to say that there are two days of the week you can’t do anything about (yesterday and tomorrow), and his singular focus on what’s right in front of him has made him one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the country.

Jack St. Clair makes a number of comparisons between sports and the practice of law.

That’s understandable, given his familiarity with, and success in, both realms. He played sports in school, and coached baseball and hockey for many years. He’s a workout fanatic and an avid golfer; his office trappings include framed paintings of Augusta National Golf Club. Meanwhile, he’s amassed a 30-year track record of success as both a prosecutor (he cut his teeth working for former D.A. Matty Ryan) and, for the past two decades, as one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the country. There’s a group photo on his credenza, himself included, of several area lawyers placed among the top 1% in their specialties by the attorney-rating service Naifeh & Smith.

 The obvious common denominator in both worlds, he said, is the desire to compete — and to win.

 “I lift weights four times a week with guys in their 20s,” St. Clair, 59, told BusinessWest, adding that he belongs to three gyms and has a full complement of equipment at home, and thus has no excuse not to work out. “And I compare and test myself against them, rather than people in their 40s and 50s.”

 It’s the same in the courtroom, an arena where St. Clair appears almost daily, and thrives through that same desire to excel. “I don’t know any successful lawyer who doesn’t love competition,” he explained. “And what I like about the practice of law is that it keeps you on your game.”

 But the sports analogies go further.

 Indeed, when asked to reflect on some of the high profile cases in his career (there have been many) and some of his more unlikely successes in the courtroom, St. Clair said he rather not.

 “If a ballplayer only looks back at his past, he’s not going to be around long,” he explained. “He may have had 4 RBIs on Tuesday, but Wednesday is a different day and different game. It’s the same in law. You have to look forward; my biggest case is my next case.”

 While he acknowledged that this quote sounds like it came from the Bill Belichick school of commentary, where the lines are predictable and sometimes a little corny, St. Clair stated repeatedly that this is how he views the world — and his profession.

 “There are two days of the week you can’t do anything about — yesterday and tomorrow,” he said. “You focus on today.”

 This is the same approach he takes to community service; despite a packed case load — he has more than 100 he’s currently working on — and his demanding work-out schedule, St. Clair also devotes quite a bit of time and energy to community service. He’s worked with groups ranging from the Springfield YMCA to the STCC Foundation Board; the American Cancer Society to the New England Board of Higher Education, and says that work is a big part of his life.

 BusinessWest continues its ongoing Attorney Profile series with a look at one of the region’s real competitors — in whatever court he’s in. In a wide-ranging interview, he talked about trial work, criminal defense, how his profession has changed over the years, and what drives him to succeed.

Trial by Fire

 St. Clair had just finished work on a master’s degree in Labor Studies at UMass in early 1972, when he took a “hiatus,” as he called it, an internship in then-Springfield Mayor Frank Freedman’s office. His plan was to soon enroll at Cornell University and study labor law.

 But Freedman talked the Chicopee native into staying in Springfield and taking a few law courses at Western New England College. It was a fortuitous bit of prompting that would ultimately take his career in a different direction, or directions, as it would turn out.

 After a stint as assistant director of the Regional Office of the Governor’s Committee on Criminal Justice, he took a job as officer in charge of probation in Federal Court in Springfield, while still attending law classes at WNEC, a schedule he accelerated to eventually earn his degree in 1976. He had opportunities to advance in the probation system, but instead wanted to practice law.

 He did so at the firm Danaher & St. Clair, specializing in litigation, and enjoying some early success in some high-profile trials, including a smuggling case tried in Federal Court in New York, and a triple-fatality manslaughter case in Middlesex Superior Court.

 “I would probably recommend to young lawyers today that they wait awhile before they take cases like that,” he said, “but I had a lot of confidence and I loved the competitiveness of trial work.”

 Those attributes were recognized by then District Attorney Ryan, who approached St. Clair about joining his office. “He said he had a couple of high-paying jobs he was going to secure,” St. Clair recalled, adding that, at the time, he had already made arrangements to join the U.S. Attorney’s Office in six months.

 He never got there, because in those six months, Ryan gave him three high-profile murder cases in which he ran up against some of the best criminal defense lawyers in the region, and prevailed.

 “It was going to be hard to go from the kinds of cases I was getting in those six months to what I would be handling in Boston, so I stayed on,” he said, noting that he eventually become one of Ryan’s first assistants. “I think he (Ryan) wanted to show me that his office was more interesting than the U.S. Attorney’s office, and that was his way of doing it.”

 St. Clair worked in the D.A.’s office for six years, gathering experience working many different types of cases in several different courts, including the state Supreme Judicial Court. He took it and shifted gears, moving into criminal and civil defense work. He was first a partner with the Chicopee-based firm Murphy, McCoubrey, Murphy, St. Clair, Gelinas, and Auth, and then his own private practice, the Law Offices of Jack St. Clair, in Springfield.

 Over the past 20 years, St. Clair has handled all types of defense work, representing individuals, corporations, and municipalities; he was counsel for the Board of Aldermen in Chicopee and later the city solicitor for that community, handling, among other things, settlement of a civil rights case involving a man charged with and then convicted of a rape he didn’t commit but for which he served 14 years in prison.

 “That was a big case, because the exposure to the city was so significant,” he said. “We settled the case for $2.4 million, which was a tremendous settlement in light of all the facts; there was a similar case at that time where the verdict was $14 million.”

 That Chicopee case exemplifies not only St. Clair’s prowess in defense work, and his competitive nature, but also his community involvement: he said he returned to Chicopee and took on work for the city as a way of giving back.

Case in Point

 When asked to compare and contrast work as a prosecutor and defense lawyer, St. Clair said there are some differences. Prosecutors usually enter a case at an earlier stage, during an investigation, he said, and thus have what could be called a head start. The D.A.’s office also has more resources to throw at a case, in most instances, he said.

 But in the final analysis, both sides are essentially working toward the same broad goal — justice.

 In the case of the prosecutor, this doesn’t always mean taking a case to trial, he said, noting that prosecutors bear the responsibility for determining whether a case is tryable and, if not, trying to negotiate a plea agreement.

 Defense lawyers, meanwhile, are charged with providing what St. Clair called “the most effective defense under the law and utlilizing all the resources available to provide that defense.

 “Because if you don’t … if our society was such that the prosecution could, on minimal evidence, convict someone, then a number of innocent people could run the risk of being convicted,” he continued. “The prosecutors understand their responsibility, and the defense lawyers understand theirs; their strategies may differ, but the goal is the same.”

 St. Clair, who has represented those accused of murder, rape, arson, assault, white-collar crimes, and municipal corruption (he has been hired by several of those indicted in the ongoing FBI probe of alleged corruption in Springfield) said he has no real litmus tests when it comes to the cases he takes or the individuals he defends, other than a feel, for lack of a better term, that the case is winnable and that he can effectively serve the client and not waste his time or money.

 “On the civil side, I don’t want to be billing someone for a case that has no real chance of success,’ he said. “It may be a case where the person believes in its merits, but when you look at it, and the law isn’t on their side, I’d rather tell them that they don’t have a case then tell them they do and deceive them; that’s not why I became a lawyer.”

 When asked how to execute an effective defense, he starts with control of the case and how it develops.

 “You have to be able to be in charge of the defense,” he explained. “You cannot have a client telling you how to defend the case; they’re retaining you for your expertise in evaluating every aspect of that case, so right upfront it’s very important that control of case resides with the lawyer handling it — working with the client.”

 While maintaining a busy caseload, St. Clair is also active the community. He has done a wide range of work for the Springfield YMCA, and was, in 1999, named its volunteer of the year. He’s also been involved with American Cancer Society, the Shriners, Springfield Country Club, the Chicopee Bar Assoc., and other groups.

 But education has been the primary focus on his time and energy. He served two years as chairman of WSC’s Board of Trustees, more than a decade on STCC’s foundation board, and 17 years as a member of the New England Board of Higher Education. He’s also worked with the The Community Teachers Partnership Program, and the North Star Academy.

 He served as an adjuct professor at WNEC’s School of Law, but told BusinessWest that a classroom full of motivated, often privileged law students is not the kind of constituency he prefers. Instead, he’d choose to work with those who have talent, but perhaps need motivation to display it or maximize it.

 “People in law school are highly motivated, they know they’re good, they know where they’re going,” he explained. “I gravitate more toward high school or college situations where some students don’t feel that they’re good, because people have told them they’re not that good, and making them believe that they are better than they think.”

 He recalls a program he initiated more than 35 years ago with the Neighborhood Youth Corps, where young African Americans were actually paid to go to school five mornings a week. They were given $50 to attend classes, but only if they passed an exam at the end of each week.

 “The idea was that people would study for the money, and then they would study because they found it interesting,” he said. “When I first proposed it, people thought I was nuts because $50 was a lot of money back in 1969, but the thought was that they would start to learn for learning’s sake and start to enjoy education. They would realize that they weren’t dumb, but that they just hadn’t been given an opportunity.

 “I received a lot of letters from people who went through that program who later went on to college and became teachers,” he continued. “I find work that achieves results like that the most satisfying.”
 
 Final Arguments

 Though he’s approaching 60, St. Clair said he’s not even thinking about retirement, or even slowing down.

 “I don’t ever plan to quit,” he said, referencing a colleague still practicing at 81 and predicting that he will likely match or surpass that number if his health permits.
 “It’s part of who I am,” he continued, referring to his law practice and stressing that word part. His family, especially his wife, whom he thanks for her support, community service, and sports are other parts.

 “I don’t want to be considered in good shape for someone my age,” he said, returning to his rugged work-out schedule. “I want to be good shape for someone in their 20s or 30s.”

 It is this kind of competitiveness that has taken him to the top of his profession.

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