by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

It was recently announced that Ken Babcock will be awarded the American Bar Association’s prestigious Dorsey Award. For those of you unaware of the Dorsey Award, a group which until a few moments ago included me, is named after the late Charles H. Dorsey, Jr. who was a long time Executive Director of Maryland’s Legal Aid Bureau and “a Champion of the Poor and Underprivileged.” He died in 1995, and the award has been given annually since 1996. Its purpose is to recognize “exceptional work by a public defender or a legal aid lawyer.”

Ken, as doubtless of all of you who read the Orange County Lawyer know, is the Executor Director and General Counsel of the Public Law Center, a position he has held for almost 10 years taking over from Scott Wylie. But who is the man behind the name, or, more aptly, behind the beard? Inquiring minds want to know. . . .

Well to start out with he is a “Valley Guy,” although you will not find his speech peppered with the malapropisms generally attributed to the distaff progeny of that region.

His parents were high school sweethearts at Van Nuys High. Ken grew up in Burbank and when he went to college his parents moved to Manhattan Beach. His parents, who probably went through the same debate as other newly found empty nesters, did relent and give him their forwarding address, although the new house, did, as I recall have one less bedroom. (In our case, we tried feminizing every remaining bedroom which may have discouraged, but did not prevent, masculine renvoi, but I digress.)

Ken’s father was a teacher and football coach, coaching about 20 years in high school and another eight or nine years in junior college and his mother taught as well for a time. His father played football with the late Don Drysdale and coached Tom Ramsey who went on to play with the New England Patriots. When Ramsey was playing quarterback, his rival quarterback at a nearby high school was John Elway.

Ken credits his father with stressing a coach’s credo of hard work as well as the importance of a level playing field which is reflective of Ken’s life of pro bono work.

Ken is also very proud of his sister, Laura, who lives in some place called North Mankato, Minnesota, and despite having five kids, opened a new coffee shop and has an Internet candy business specializing in flavored marshmallows or, as those of us who used to roast them on spears of straightened coat hangers called them, “s’mores.” Naturally, as part of my in-depth research, I located her website at www.lcandy.com.

Ken graduated from Chatsworth High School in 1974. He went on to U.C. Santa Barbara obtaining a B.A. with highest honors in political science in 1978 and obtained his law degree from U.C. Davis in 1981 where he was the Legal Research Editor of the Law Review and a Member of the Moot Court Board.

After law school, he worked for the McCutchen firm for a couple of years and for four or five years thereafter at a small Westwood firm where he went to get more court experience. After the Westwood firm folded, Ken found himself out of a job. For reasons which he could not adequately explain other than to say he was “younger then,” he decided to travel to South America with nothing but a backpack and a guidebook.

When he returned to California, a buddy at his old firm saw him writing a letter to Public Counsel in response to a Daily Journal ad. His friend said that he had heard from his sister that there was “something weird” about the job and suggested that Ken give his sister, who worked at Public Counsel, a call. Ken did so and it turned out that there was indeed something unusual about the job—it did not exist. It was one of those jobs which had been “created” but for which no funding existed. As luck would have it, however, there was another job there that was actually available and one for which they had been trying to reach Ken but could not find him in South America. (He had done pro bono work for Public Counsel while at McCutchen.) He was told to get his resume in immediately, which he did, and he had an interview the next day and started shortly thereafter as a staff lawyer working in home equity frauds and student loan problems. This work led him to work on legislation in Sacramento and drafting regulations in Washington D.C.

In the late 1990s, the courts, which had not yet been seized entirely by the state, were establishing a variety of committee forums to try to learn how to best serve local communities. At one of these meetings, some type of practice question was asked about the uses of beer. Of the entire group, which I gather was quite large, only two knew that beer can be used to kill snails, Ken Babcock and Kathleen O’Leary. (Now, I don’t know about you, but I have often awakened in the middle of the night wondering just what it is that goes on in judicial conferences, but if I guessed every day for a lifetime, I would never have come up with using beer to kill snails.)

At another meeting, the person in charge, the Presiding Judge in San Diego Superior Court, suggested that the next meeting be held in San Diego. Ms. O’Leary responded, “We can all take the train.” Now, there are two versions of that story: His—“She was looking straight at me when she said we could all take the train;” Hers—“That’s preposterous, I was talking to the entire group.” Ah, perception. The next meeting was held in San Diego but Ken and K.O. were, ironically, the only ones who took the train for a four hour round trip for a two hour meeting. They did, however, start dating and later, as everyone in the Orange County legal community knows, married.

Like any good writer of exposé-type profiles, I regularly seek out confidential informants to whom I promise enduring anonymity. I luckily found the perfect possibility at a recent ABTL meeting. After an exchange of pleasantries, she said, “I hear you are writing an article about my husband.” I allowed as how I was, and she said, “Ask him about snails and mice.” She was also quick to give me her version of the “take the train” story.

Armed with this newfound information, I buttonholed Ken who freely and expansively gave me the beer-snail story but he refused, politely, but no less definitely, to say anything about mice, although it was clear he knew what I was talking about, even if I did not.

Reticence begets curiosity. After pressing him again, he called me confessing that he had been threatened that if he didn’t tell me, he would be “outed” by my confidential informant. The story, it seems, is this. Sometime ago, when Associate Supreme Court Justice Carol Corrigan was their house guest, Ken discovered a dead mouse floating in the pool. Ken was “too squeamish” to retrieve it and after some desultory discussion, Justice Corrigan broke the impasse and got the mouse herself.

After their house guest departed, or at least was out of earshot, Ken was faced with those kinds of wifely unanswerable questions that all husbands fear: “You made a Supreme Court Justice get a dead mouse out of our pool?”

The story does not end there. A second mouse was found floating in the pool and again Ken was too squeamish to remove it.

On the day he called me, however, in a voice beaming with pride, he stated that very morning there was a third mouse floating in their pool. Not only that, it was a huge mouse, much larger than the two prior floaters, and he got it, all by himself, proving what I call Millar’s Doctrine of Tertiary Courage.

If you are too squeamish twice, try one more time.

Mr. Millar is a member of the firm of Millar, Hodges & Bemis in Newport Beach. He can be reached at millar@mhblaw.net.