[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 13]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 18913-18914]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       RECOGNIZING MATTHEW SCOTT

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. RALPH M. HALL

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 11, 2007

  Mr. HALL of Texas. Madam Speaker, I rise today to share an article 
written about a young man who serves as a member of the city council--
guiding and planning for a city that the Dallas News pointed out last 
February to be in the county seat of the fastest growing county in the 
United States. I wish to place this article in the Congressional Record 
to highlight the service of one unusually well-qualified young family 
man who finds time to also guide the destiny of my hometown of 
Rockwall, Texas, as it sheds its rural status and grows into the city 
of tomorrow. The article speaks for itself as set out in a recent issue 
of ``Texas Super Lawyers 2007 Rising Stars Edition.''

                              Great Scott

                            By Paul Sweeney

       Why is Matthew Scott, a 39-year-old Dallas attorney, so 
     often described as ``a go-to guy''?
       Just ask Greg Supan, a former law partner and colleague at 
     the Dallas firm of Bell Nunnally & Martin. Not long ago, 
     Supan got a last-minute, out-of-the-blue telephone call: An 
     old fraternity brother from the University of Texas was 
     relocating his oral surgery practice from Houston to Dallas. 
     He urgently needed help in structuring an employment 
     agreement between him and his new dentistry group.
       Unfortunately, the attorney who assured Supan he could 
     handle the assignment called back three days later and 
     announced he was going on vacation. ``He told me that I 
     didn't tell him it was time-sensitive,'' Supan recalls, 
     exasperation creeping into his voice.
       So he turned to Scott, all 6 feet 6 inches of him. The 
     former basketball player at the University of Iowa has, over 
     the last decade, become an avid Texan--so much so that he won 
     election to the city council in the bedroom community of 
     Rockwall.
       ``At that point we had 24 hours to get the assignment 
     done,'' Supan says, ``and Matt, an expert in employment law, 
     dropped everything to help out. He ended up doing a great job 
     on what was actually a very complicated partnership. The 
     client was thrilled.'' Supan adds: ``When you're down by two, 
     you pass the ball to him. He's a real buzzer-beater.''
       Amid the book-lined suite of offices at Bell Nunnally one 
     hears similar stories, not just about Scott's dependability 
     but also about his work ethic. Sherri Alexander, who heads 
     the litigation section at the firm, says, ``At our business-
     development meetings, where the partners get together to talk 
     about work, and about which new clients have been contacted 
     recently, Matt's always willing to participate.'' Praising 
     his sense of timing, she adds, ``Not too much--but not too 
     little either.''
       ``And when I have to go out of town on business,'' she 
     says, ``I can always trust him to deal directly with a client 
     and handle things well in my absence.''
       The bottom line? ``He has his own docket,'' she says, 
     ''plus the city council. But if somebody needs help, he 
     always goes the extra mile.''
       The only son of a union printer and his Iowa farm wife, 
     Scott grew up in Des Moines, where his childhood had its 
     rough patches. He was bused to schools across town, an 
     experience that put him in contact with a tough crowd. The 
     experience helped teach him how to get along with people from 
     different backgrounds, an ability that he inherited from his 
     mother, who set an example of unpretentiousness.
       Scott attributes his work ethic to his father, a veteran of 
     World War II who saw plenty of action--and bloodshed--in the 
     Pacific. He describes his father (both of his parents are 
     deceased) as someone who insisted on order and neatness, took 
     pride in his work, seldom missed a day on the job in 44 years 
     and was always straight with people. ''Dad was the most 
     honest person I've ever known,'' he says. ``And loyal, too.''
       Those loyalties extended to his employer, his co-workers 
     and his labor union. But there was never any question that 
     his son would have a different kind of life. His father often 
     lamented the fact that he had not taken advantage of the 
     educational opportunities offered by the GI Bill, Scott says, 
     ``and it was always very clear that I was going to college.''
       He majored in psychology and played basketball as a walk-on 
     shooting guard. He didn't get a lot of playing time; yet his 
     coach, Tom Davis, hails him as an important asset to a team 
     that sent several players to the NBA.
       ``I remember Matt Scott as a motivated and aggressive 
     athlete, a good team player who fit in well,'' says Davis, 
     now the head coach at Drake University in Des Moines--where 
     Scott graduated from law school. ``And he was also coachable, 
     someone who could accept criticism and was willing to make 
     changes that would help the team.
       ``Maybe he was the 10th man on the team when we could only 
     play five,'' the coach adds. ``But I recall what a good 
     teammate Matt was. He was somebody people liked to be with, 
     and practice with, and travel with--and he had a great work 
     ethic.''
       Some 40 minutes east of Dallas, such comments are echoed by 
     colleagues in the chambers at the spanking-new city hall in 
     Rockwall, seat of Rockwall County, the fastest-growing county 
     in Texas. Scott, who describes himself as a staunch 
     Republican, nonetheless works well with all members of the 
     seven-person council, including dyed-in-the-wool Democrat 
     Margo Nielsen.
       ''He's brash and he's smart and he's passionate about the 
     issues,'' says Nielsen, ex-director of Rockwall County 
     Helping Hands, a nonprofit social services agency. ``And as a 
     lawyer'' she adds, ``he's trained to think holistically and 
     broadly.''
       Nielsen sings Scott's praises for his efforts to bring city 
     services to Lake Rockwall Estates. Despite its impressive 
     name, the ``estates'' is actually a dilapidated mobile-home 
     park that had long been ignored by the city. But, thanks 
     largely to Scott's efforts, Nielsen says, the city is in the 
     process of annexing the unincorporated area and will soon

[[Page 18914]]

     provide, among other things, water and sewer services, trash 
     pickup and improved roads.
       ``It's not the kind of issue that most city leaders look 
     for,'' Nielsen says. ``There are no political rewards. But 
     under Matt's leadership, it's getting done.''
       Although he is still in his first term on the council, 
     Scott has also won the confidence of Rockwall's mayor, Bill 
     Cecil, a retired contract-director with the Department of 
     Defense. ``He's my mayor pro tem,'' Cecil says, bragging 
     about Scott the way the famous outlaw Butch Cassidy might 
     say: ``That's my sidekick, `The Sundance Kid.'''
       Together, Scott and Cecil share a keen interest in economic 
     development, typified by $20 million in public spending that 
     the city is lavishing on a new harbor at nearby Lake Ray 
     Hubbard. Replete with fountains, pools, a waterfall and even 
     a ``mini-riverwalk,'' the public-works project is luring 
     private-sector financing for lakeside condominiums, retail 
     stores and office space. On a tour of the Mediterranean-style 
     construction that is under way, both men are buoyant. ``This 
     will be a big economic engine for the city,'' says Scott.
       In junior high school, Scott says, he visited Texas during 
     a winter break and played tennis in shorts and a T-shirt 
     while several inches of snow blanketed the ground back in Des 
     Moines. He vowed that he would someday make balmy Texas his 
     home--a pledge that he kept soon after he completed law 
     school. Staying on a friend's sofa in Dallas, he studied 
     for--and passed--the Lone Star State bar exam.
       Newly married and with his ticket punched for practicing 
     law, Scott and his wife pulled up stakes and set out for 
     Texas. Arriving in Dallas, neither had a job lined up. ``We 
     had two cars, the stuff in our apartment, and a couple of 
     thousand dollars in wedding money,'' he says. ``That was 
     it.''
       After honeymooning in Cancun, the couple job-hunted in 
     earnest. His wife found work as a legal secretary and Scott 
     worked as a contract attorney. Ever the walk-on, he landed a 
     job at Cooper, Aldous & Scully in the same way that he made 
     the team at Iowa: by being aggressive.
       He met one of the partners, Dallas lawyer Charla Aldous, 
     during a deposition. ``I asked her if she was hiring,'' he 
     recalls, ``and she said `maybe' and I pulled out a resume and 
     then I got an interview.''
       He got hired and moved to Bell Nunnally in June 1999.
       At Bell Nunnally, Scott has been making a name for himself 
     handling the full panoply of employment law, including 
     discrimination, workers' compensation and sexual harassment 
     cases. His expertise was ratified when District Judge Martin 
     Feldman in Louisiana selected him to chair the U.S. 5th 
     Circuit Court of Appeals' draft of the pattern jury charges 
     for employment law. It took more than three years of effort 
     getting the seven-member committee to find common ground.
       His skill at being a team player came in handy there as 
     well. One of his law partners, Thomas Case, lauds Scott for 
     his ability to build bridges between the plaintiff and 
     defense attorneys who were evenly represented--and divided--
     on the committee. ``The way he ran [the committee] was by 
     trying to reach consensus,'' Case says. ``When they couldn't 
     reach agreement, they put their differences in the 
     footnotes'' (That makes it ``subject to further development 
     by the district courts,'' Case adds.)
       Case--who is 20 years Scott's senior and is something of a 
     mentor to him--says that employment law cases are often 
     ``emotionally charged.'' He says people become so attached to 
     their jobs--and so identified by what they do--that ``trying 
     employment cases is an awful lot like dealing with death or 
     divorce.''
       Although Texas is an ``employment at will'' state--which 
     means that, in the absence of a contract or labor-union 
     agreement, termination does not require cause--juries may 
     nonetheless feel sympathy for a plaintiff who has lost his or 
     her job. But one of Scott's strongest suits is that ``he has 
     a good appreciation for what will or won't play with a 
     jury,'' Case says. ``Jurors have all been employees, and it's 
     likely that a few of them have had an adverse experience with 
     an employer.''
       One of the hardest parts of Scott's job can be convincing a 
     client that what seems like an obvious argument for an 
     employee's dismissal will not only leave a jury unmoved but 
     could be inadmissible. Scott recalls a recent case in which 
     the owner of an apartment complex fired a maintenance worker 
     who was not only doing sub-par work but had a criminal 
     record.
       But the, employer was miffed when she learned that Scott 
     was not willing to introduce the ex-employee's criminal 
     record. ``She was British and frustrated that someone could 
     file a lawsuit against her but she couldn't bring up the 
     person's criminal record,'' Scott. says. ``She wasn't 
     familiar with the U.S. judicial system.''
       Despite his best efforts at negotiating a compromise, Scott 
     says that he had to remove himself from the case. ``The 
     sticking point was what I told her I would--and wouldn't--
     do,'' he says. ``She thought we could use [the plaintiff's 
     criminal record] to make the lawsuit just go away,'' he adds. 
     ``Smaller clients get frustrated and don't understand that 
     the process takes time.''
       In a state known for its flamboyant trial attorneys, 
     Scott's colleagues cite his straightforwardness and plain 
     speaking as a key asset in the courtroom. ``He does a good 
     job at presenting his position and of being himse1f,'' Case 
     says. ``Young lawyers don't realize that what works best is 
     just being who they are. Juries appreciate someone like Matt 
     who comes across as solid and sincere and prepared. Juries 
     have a knack at seeing through an act.''
       Now the father of three young children, Scott has ambitions 
     for higher office when he is finally term-limited after six 
     years on the Rockwall City Council. ``Anyone who runs for 
     public office and says he doesn't have higher political 
     ambitions is a liar,'' he says. ``Sure, I have higher 
     political ambitions. I already ran for the state House [in 
     Iowa] when I was in law school.
       ``So, yes, I'd like to hold other offices. But the Texas 
     Legislature is out because it is a part-time job that would 
     destroy my full-time job. So I'd have to look at something 
     that either allowed me to continue practicing law, as the 
     city council does, or something that would be a fulltime, 
     paying job that replaces my legal pracrlce.
       ``So right now I have no idea what my ambitions are,'' he 
     says. ``But, yes, I do have them.''

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