Diverse career brings Spickler back to Public Defender’s Office

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

Oct. 18, 2012

Upon graduating from the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law in 2000, Josh Spickler took a fortuitous first step into his legal career with the Shelby County’s Office of Public Defender under A C Wharton Jr.

It was an experience that ignited a passion for the courtroom and public service in the young lawyer.

“I didn’t have grand dreams to be some Atticus Finch kind of guy, but I did, during law school, gravitate toward the courtroom in trial clinics and trial advocacy classes,” Spickler said.

He clerked for the public defender’s office where he said he “just fell in love with the courtroom, with the clients, with the challenge of trying a case against another lawyer and doing it from the hip sometimes and with surprises around every corner.”

But there are experiences to be had in any young man’s life and after a few years he left the public defender to start his own firm, one in which he was able to continue the same sort of work but “was able to get more trial experience a little quicker,” he said.

A law firm, being a small business, demands attentions outside of the courtroom with overhead and marketing, lean months and fat, and once the first of Spickler’s two sons with his wife, Ginger, came along, it was time for a change.

“I kind of panicked because it’s one thing to starve myself … but it was sort of a wake-up call that this month to month and crazy revenue fluctuations is a big risk, it was just a grind,” he said … (read more)