A native of Alpine, Texas, Beryl P.  (Berry) Crowley is proud of her Far West Texas roots.  She left Alpine to attend Mills College in Oakland, California, returned to Texas for law school, and has never looked back.  She was second in her family to attend UT Law School, having been preceded by her paternal great grandfather Lafayette Hutchison who was a graduate of UT School of Law in 1888. She has been a resident of Austin since 1974, as well as from 1969-71 when she was in law school.

 

Berry has over forty-two years’ legal experience representing a broad range of clients and entities, with a career that has taken her in many different directions. Berry’s first twenty-two years in practice were spent in a law firm setting with a general office practice, first at a small firm in Brenham, Texas where she was the first female; then at Jackson Walker, formerly Small, Craig & Werkenthin  of Austin, TX , where she began in 1974 and was the first female, and where she stayed for 20 years.

 

She was active in the local (Austin) and state (State Bar of Texas) professional development and continuing legal education groups.  She was a speaker as well as author and participant in seminars, both locally and across the state.  She was a founder of the Travis County Women Lawyers’ Association in the late 70’s, and a founder of Austin Lawyers’ Care, predecessor to Central Texas VLS (also in late 70’s).  She was a founder of the current Women in the Law Section of the State Bar in the late 70’s.

 

While practicing law, Berry always took seriously her commitment to giving back to the legal community.  She participated and was very active in bar association activities.  She was President of the Washington County Bar Association in Brenham in 1973.  When she moved to Austin, she became active in the Austin Bar Association, the Austin Young Lawyers Association, the State Bar of Texas, and the Texas Young Lawyers’ Association.  She held leadership roles in all these groups, and is particularly proud to have been elected the first female president of the TYLA in 1983, being the first woman to hold a state-wide state bar elective office.  She served well as the first female on the Executive Committee of the State Bar Board of Directors, and was a Director of the State Bar Board of Directors, 1983-86.  During her award-winning term as President of the TYLA, she married Austin lawyer Mike Crowley and they blended their families, with Berry bringing three girls to the family and Mike bringing the oldest daughter and the youngest, a son.  Mike was a partner in an Austin law firm, and they and their family were very busy with work and school and all that life entailed. She participated in various community activities, as well as Austin forums, such as Leadership Austin.  She was a Commissioner to her local Fire District, and was an active member of her Homeowner’s Association, as well as serving as a Trustee on the board of the private high school her children attended.

 

After being knocked down, and successfully beating two kinds of cancer in 1990, Berry slowed down a bit.  She continued with her firm, and with her bar association work, serving as Chairman of the Texas Bar Foundation, and subsequently Chairman of the Fellows of the Texas Bar Foundation, as well as membership on various State Bar committees.

 

 In 1994, she took a step back and redirected her career.  She retired from her law firm, and became Executive Director of the Texas Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism.  She continued her involvement in the bar associations, including the American Bar Association, where she was a State Bar and then Austin Bar representative to the House of Delegates, and a Council member of the ABA TIPS Section.  Her husband Mike Crowley died in 2000, and shortly thereafter Berry was diagnosed with Cancer for a third time—again, she beat it and continued on.  She took the Center for Legal Ethics to new heights, and became very active in Austin activities.  She was proud to be admitted to the US Supreme Court in 2002.

 

In 2006, again redirecting her career, she retired from the Texas Center for Legal Ethics and started her law firm of one:  Beryl P. Crowley, Attorney & Counselor at Law, and also began learning the intricacies of Legal Recruiting, first at a national Legal Recruiting Company (Major, Lindsey & Africa), and since 2011, her own company, Crowley Legal Recruiting LLC.