How A Big Law Attorney Stays Connected to His Native American Roots
Dickstein Shapiro senior insurance coverage practice partner and executive committee member Jim Murray, like a number of high-powered DC attorneys, is a Harvard Law grad and Rhodes Scholar. But unlike most others, he grew up on a Native American reservation in Montana, on a farm his family still owns.
A member of the Sioux Tribe, Jim was raised on the Fort Peck Reservation. He invited us to look around his corner office, which displays most of his collection of Edward Curtis photographs. Curtis is renowned for documenting Native American history over a 30-year span starting in the late 1890s. Funded by JP Morgan, the artist produced around 40,000 images from 80 tribes. This portrait of famous longtime Oglala Lakota Chief Red Cloud was Jim's first Curtis purchase—the year he made partner at his former firm, Covington—and is his favorite of the photographs.
That's Jim perched on a fence post on the farm where he was raised, in the northeastern corner of Montana. (Though he was born 60 miles away in what was the nearest hospital, across the border in North Dakota.) He grew up with a mix of influences: his father had dropped out of second grade to care for the farm, though he was a heavy reader, and his mother had gone away to a private school. A trial lawyer whose "real love is being in front of the jury," Jim says this background may be a factor in his success. "I can speak both languages."
Jim's helped clients over the last decade get insurance recoveries for more than $1B. About a third of his practice during those years has dealt with insurance coverage work for institutions liable for acts of sexual abuse. He has represented numerous Roman Catholic Dioceses and Orders. His role is recovering as much money as possible for the victims—due to extended statutes of limitation, many of whom are in their 50s, 60s and 70s. As the appointed special insurance coverage counsel to the Oregon Province of Jesuits, he recently secured $118M from insurance companies on historical policies, all of which goes to the victims. For the much smaller Helena Catholic Diocese in his home state, he secured $15M earlier this year.
Over Jim's shoulder is a Curtis photograph of Gray Bear, who's from the same denomination of Sioux as is Jim: Yanktonai. While majoring in philosophy at the University of Montana (growing up, he says it never crossed his mind to go anywhere else), Jim was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and spent three years at Oxford, intending to eventually teach the philosophy of law. Instead, he moved on to get his JD at Harvard (while teaching in its philosophy department), clerk on the 3rd Circuit, and become special assistant to FBI Director William Webster. He joined Covington and made partner, then spent 11 years on the West Coast heading a trial litigation boutique he founded in Seattle, before joining Dickstein in '07.
This is one of Curtis's most famous images—Navajo horseback riders in Arizona's Canyon de Chelly. (Unrelated to this, Jim has represented the Navajo Nation, which was an insurance client.) The Curtis photographs in Jim's office are original photogravures, which are now highly in demand. For a time, the artist was largely forgotten about, and a woman who realized their quality and significance bought up most of Curtis' collection. She has a shop in Seattle, where Jim first started collecting the photographs about 20 years ago. He tells us that his collection has been on hiatus since having children, but he is planning to start up again.
Jim showed us this non-Curtis photograph with his father in the center. Jim may be based in DC, but he stays in touch with the West Coast: playing guitar in a band called Smoke Creek (named for the creek running through their farm) with his Seattle-based brother, which released its second CD this month; serving on the University of Montana College of Arts and Sciences board; and for more than a decade serving on the Montana selection committee for Rhodes Scholarships. A lot of students who are candidates have straight As, and all are very smart, he says. "I think what we're always looking for is something a little bit different."
