BAMSL’s 2026 Virtual 15-Hour Annual MCLE Update takes place on Friday, June 26, from 7:00 a.m. to 9:50 p.m. This webinar is offered via Zoom and it provides a convenient way to fulfill your entire annual CLE requirement, including ethics and elimination of bias credits, all in a single day. Sessions include Robert’s Rules of Order, federal criminal practice, jury selection, ERISA basics, managing conflicts of interest, well-being/yoga, using AI to help reduce bias, Algebra for Lawyers and more.

Don't miss this opportunity to stay compliant and informed.

The 2026 BAMSL Golf Tournament takes place on Monday, June 15 at Glen Echo Country Club with an 11:00 a.m. Shotgun Start – Scramble Format.

Registration includes boxed lunches before start, 18-holes of golf, golf cart, post golf reception with heavy appetizers and drinks while prizes are announced.

Join us on Wednesday, June 3 at 12 Noon at the BAMSL Bar Center or on Zoom for a discussion of all the trademark cases decided in the Supreme Court, 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and District Courts in the 8th Circuit in the past year. Joel R. Samuels will discuss new developments and application of existing jurisprudence.

by Marshall Hier and John C. Rasp

(As part of the BAMSL History Committee’s efforts to share the region’s legal heritage)

In the fall of 1815 there were fewer than two dozen lawyers enrolled at the bar of the Missouri Territory when a 33-year-old Tennessean signed the list of lawyers in St. Louis.1 His name was Thomas Hart Benton, a name which would in time become nearly as famous and honored as that of Benton's eventual colleagues in the United States Senate, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, and which would later be proudly bestowed on a grandnephew who was to become famous in his own right as an artist.