“For both Fisher Patterson and myself, we have always tried to maintain high ethical standards and produce a good result for our clients. The recognition that a lot of our attorneys have received over the years from peer review reflect that we’ve basically done that.” Those words stayed with me after I interviewed J.B. Our conversation ranged from his early years in practice to the values that have shaped his career.

When J.B. joined Fisher Patterson fresh out of law school in 1976, he quickly realized how little his education had prepared him for practice. That realization was a starting point for a distinguished career, including thirty-six years as managing partner and nearly five decades at Fisher Patterson. Instead of dwelling on what law school hadn’t taught him, J.B. put his nose to the grindstone as he started to explore the areas where law school provided little exposure.

Early in his career, J.B. handled numerous civil rights claims, representing Kansas governmental entities such as the Shawnee County Sheriff’s department. In a few of the cases that J.B. described, he was sued in an individual capacity simply because of who he and the firm represented. Those suits were, fortunately, unsuccessful. However, they offered an early glimpse into the pressures and unpredictability that can come with being an attorney.

Around the same time the firm was handling these cases for the Shawnee County Sheriff’s department, J.B. entered the bankruptcy field, which would become a substantial part of his practice. To begin, J.B. defended approximately thirty to forty preference actions originating from a failed investment scheme in Colby, KS. In those cases, he represented Kansas farmers who were sued by a bankruptcy trustee to recover payments the debtor had made to the farmers shortly before filing for bankruptcy. His work for Kansas farmers continues to this day.[1]

Even as bankruptcy became one of his primary practices, there were detours along the way. For a time, Fisher Patterson had a thriving products liability litigation defense practice. Donald Patterson focused on securing rulings that would prevent unqualified witnesses from presenting themselves as experts. According to J.B., Donald was instrumental in integrating Daubert and those kinds of decisions into Kansas law. Consequently, the Plaintiffs’ bar brought fewer of these types of cases because they could not rely on the expert support they had been relying on before. The strategy was so successful that the volume of those cases started to decline.

Beyond those detours, J.B.’s practice continued to grow, primarily by word of mouth. As J.B. explained, that growth was built on relationships: “referrals depend on personal relationships. It is a hit or miss process when you’re dealing with folks that are a good ways from where we’re located in Topeka. But over time, you develop those personal relationships, and the next thing you know, you have a lot of them. I’ve been fortunate over the years to receive some recognition for being a bankruptcy attorney. And that is something that gives people some degree of confidence that I might know what I’m doing.”

That description is characteristically modest. He has been listed in Best Lawyers in America since 1997 in the areas of Banking and Finance Law, Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights, Corporate Law, and Bankruptcy Litigation. He has also been listed in Missouri and Kansas Super Lawyers for a number of years—a designation only received because of peer-recognition. He has even been named Best Lawyers’ Lawyer of the Year in multiple categories for Topeka, KS. Yet, for J.B., the awards have never been the point.

J.B. has never let the recognition define him. When I asked him whether he had ever thought about throwing “King” into Fisher Patterson’s name, he took no time to answer, “No, I did not.” Although “Justice B. King” is a phenomenal name for a lawyer for obvious reasons, J.B. has shown little interest in self-promotion. In fact, when I commented that I was amazed by his fifty year career at a single firm, he said, “I thought that was just what everyone does. David Fisher, Don Patterson, Dudley Smith—they all stayed with the firm for years.”

That same instinct towards humility also shaped the way he led Fisher Patterson. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, he focused on recruiting “good lawyers and good people” to grow the firm. Under his leadership, the firm grew from seven attorneys to twenty-four. That same entrepreneurial spirit allowed J.B. to sustain a tenure as managing partner that lasted longer than I have been alive.

Having spent five decades at the firm, J.B. has had a front-row seat to the changes in the profession—especially as to technology. He described the original benefit of hitting the books and doing the analysis that came with the pre-computer era of legal practice as “itself a learning sort of experience.” That said, J.B. acknowledged the value of technological progress in the profession: “the goal of technology is to speed that process up and to give folks an opportunity to develop arguments they might not be able to think of on their own. And it’s just gotten more geared toward that with AI. With AI it’s so powerful that people kind of get drawn into accepting it for real.”

When our conversation turned to advice for younger lawyers and law students, J.B. emphasized the importance of loving what you do. Asked what advice he would give to new lawyers, J.B. said “If you enjoy what you’re doing, that should lead to being successful, assuming that you started out with some basic foundation that you can build on. And you have to be willing to put in the time. It’s not a worthwhile career if what you’re doing is watching the clock.”

He also emphasized the importance of broad exposure early in a legal career: “It’s important to get exposure to as many areas of law that you can. You need to get an idea of different areas of work to know what you do or do not want to do. I would strongly encourage law students to get internship, work for courts, things along those lines. Until you get exposure to that, I don’t think you have an adequate foundation to decide what kinds of classes you’re going to take. I think you’d have to have some understanding of the ‘real world,’ and I would think that would be most helpful.”

When all is said and done, J.B.’s legacy at Fisher Patterson is more than longevity, recognition, or leadership. His time with the firm has instilled Fisher Patterson’s current culture. Now that he is no longer the managing partner, J.B. told me he actually gets to practice law. As it happens, managing a law firm with three locations and dozens of employees is time consuming. With the extra time available in his week, there is no end in sight for J.B. King’s time as an attorney. I’ll end with this—I’m glad that his experience is on my side of the table and only two doors down. A sincere thank you from myself and the rest of the folks at the firm for making it what it is today.

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