Page 22 - San Antonio Vol 1 No 3

David Stanush
and men who had a willingness to spend countless hours passing on their knowledge of the profes- sion to a younger lawyer. I know I have been blessed to be mentored by them.
AALM: Tell us about your team.
Stanush: Even though techni- cally I have been employed by a lot of di erent law rms, I have been with the same group of people for almost 32 years. e primary rea- son is due to the leadership in the rm and the tax section. Stanley Blend kept us all together dur- ing some rough times and he as- sembled a good group of tax, estate
AALM: When did you rst know you wanted to become a lawyer?
Stanush: I was working as a CPA with Deloitte in Houston when I rst thought about becom- ing a lawyer as a result of work- ing with a number of lawyers on projects related to my role as an accountant. I went back to law school with the goal being to come back to San Antonio – my home city – and practice tax law.
AALM: Tell us about the start of your legal career and some early mentors.
Stanush: When I was looking at where to work in San Antonio, I talked with Professor Stanley Jo- hanson, a renowned professor in estate planning at the law school. Professor Johanson told me that if I wanted to be a tax lawyer, I should try to get a job with Stanley Blend, who is one of the best tax lawyers in the country.
and business lawyers and we all work well together and comple- ment each other in our di erent skill sets.
e mergers with Strasburger and Clark Hill added other tal- ented lawyers to the team. Estate planning is a complicated area of the law and it certainly helps to be able to go down the hall and col- laborate with other skilled lawyers to talk through the issues. All the people in our o ce are incredible, from the sta to the attorneys, and it is nice to come to work at a place where we all enjoy one another.
AALM: How do you maintain work-life balance?
Stanush: e one major aw in the legal profession is that the profession is not necessarily con- ducive to a good family life, espe- cially now when you are expected to be constantly connected to work. I have been blessed to have a wonderful wife, Kathy, and an amazing family, including daugh- ter, Annemarie (and her husband, Sean, and children, Ellie, Ben and Ford), daughter, Taylor, and daughter, Payton. We have been able to have a good family life. A strong faith in God and a lot of prayers have certainly kept our family strong, especially when the demands of the profession have put pressure on the bonds of the family.
AALM: Tell us about your hob- bies or how you spend your down- time.
Stanush: I do have a number of interests outside of the law. One is bicycles. I still have my original bicycle that I bought with the rst money I earned when I gradu- ated in 1981 – a Miyata 610 tour- ing bicycle that I still ride almost every weekend. I have three other bicycles and enjoy both road and mountain biking. However, the most enjoyable aspect of bicycling at this stage in my life is that I have a trailer I hook up to one of my bicycles and whenever our grand- children come over they almost al- ways are up for a ride in the trailer (and the two oldest have done the Tour de Gruene with me).
CLARK HILL STRASBURGER
2301 Broadway Street San Antonio, TX 78215 (210) 250-6000 www.clarkhill.com
Fortunately, I was able to land my rst job with Stanley’s rm and even more fortunate due to other circumstances to be mentored in
the estate planning area by Jesse Oppenheimer and Tay- lor Boone. Both of these men are the true epitome of what it means to be a lawyer – men with integrity, men who are involved in the community, men who have true exper- tise in their areas of the law,
Working with the Best