[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 128 (Thursday, October 3, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1733]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO EDWIN HEAFEY, JR.

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NANCY PELOSI

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, October 2, 2002

  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a remarkable 
Californian, who has left an indelible mark on the law and the 
community through his work in both the courtroom and the classroom.
  Edwin Heafey, Jr. was a founding partner of the Oakland-based law 
firm Crosby, Heafey, Roach and May. With his father, brother and a law 
school classmate, Edwin Heafey built the firm from eight attorneys to 
250 attorneys, and six offices throughout the state of California.
  Edwin Heafey was a lawyer's lawyer, among the last of the breed who 
could rightly claim to be an expert in fields ranging from business law 
to personal injury law and who had 150 trials under his belt to prove 
it.
  He represented Alameda County in the Oakland Raiders' $100 million 
antitrust dispute with the National Football League, and some of his 
big cases helped shape product liability law in California and across 
the country. In these cases and others, he was a fierce advocate, but 
one known for his good humor and courtesy as much as his expertise and 
tenacity.
  His knowledge of the law was as encyclopedic as his respect for it 
was immense. Edwin literally wrote the book on trial procedure.
  As a professor at Boalt Hall law school in Berkeley for 17 years, he 
helped train the next generation of trial lawyers. As a teacher and, 
for many, as a mentor long after graduation, Edwin Heafey seeded the 
California legal community with talented young people steeped in both 
his knowledge and his uncompromising ethic.
  Edwin Heafey held himself to the highest standards and believed that 
the law--and his law firm--could be a significant force for social as 
well as legal justice.
  The Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May Foundation has made hundreds of 
thousands of dollars worth of grants to non-profit organizations 
throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California. Grant 
recipients have included such organizations as Second Chance Adult 
Literacy Program, Los Angeles Youth Conservation Corps and the Lawyers' 
Committee for Civil Rights.
  In addition, every year dozens of Crosby Heafey lawyers provide pro 
bono legal services totaling thousands of hours. They represent asylum 
seekers from Central America, Tibet and Haiti and seniors who have been 
taken advantage of or abused. They help people with AIDS to plan their 
estates and provide legal representation to low-income people who would 
otherwise go unrepresented in discrimination cases, landlord-tenant 
disputes and consumer problems.
  The firm Edwin Heafey helped found is unique in another respect. 
While many big companies preach the virtues of diversity, few actually 
achieve a truly diverse workforce. Through commitment to the 
recruitment and retention of minority and women lawyers, the 2002 issue 
of Minority Law Journal ranked Crosby, Heafey, Roach and May as the 
10th most diverse of the nation's 250 largest law firms.
  For that, and for so much more, the East Bay of California and 
indeed, the legal community nationwide, has much to be thankful for 
from Edwin Heafey Jr.
  Edwin Heafey succumbed to cancer this summer, leaving behind his 
beloved wife, Mary, two children, three stepchildren and four much-
adored grandchildren.
  His family, the closest people to him, gave the best description of 
him that I can imagine in a card written shortly after their loss.
  They called him ``fun, a phrase maker, the problem solver. He 
repaired relationships, created opportunities, built careers.''
  He was ``an enthusiastic scholar, learned educator, builder of a band 
of mutually devoted companions into a law firm.''
  He was, in sum, ``quite a guy.''
  I could not agree more.

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