LIKE FATHERS, LIKE SONS
Fifth generation in NM family becomes a lawyer
Newly minted lawyer Dan Cornish has some big shoes to fill.
Sworn in with the New Mexico State Bar on April 25, he became the fifth generation in his family to follow the legal profession.
The ceremony itself is rich in tradition. Although held in Santa Fe’s Lensic Theater to accommodate a large crowd of friends and family members, it is a formal session of the state Supreme Court, and an attorney must make a motion for a candidate to be admitted. Dan Cornish’s father, Tim Cornish, made the motion, as did his own father when he was sworn in.
“Dad told me, ‘you’re going down a path that others have gone down before you. They’ve blazed a noble trail and you’re going to be held to those high standards,’ ” Dan Cornish
said.
Along that “noble trail” some of his forebears had some pretty exciting adventures; one of them investigated mobsters in the 1930s, another dodged a bomber in Panama and got stabbed in court.
The legal tradition in Dan Cornish’s family began with his greatgreat-grandfather John D. Wilson, who came to New Mexico in 1907 and became a lawyer through the old custom of working in an attorney’s office.
Wilson practiced law during New Mexico’s territorial days and served as a U.S. Attorney in the 1920s.
His son, Don Wilson, served in the Army in World War I and World War II. In between, he graduated from the University of Colorado Law School — UNM didn’t have a law school until the late 1940s. For a while he worked in Washington, D.C., investigating mobsters for the U.S. Treasury Department, including the notorious Al Capone. Don Wilson died in 1975.
Wilson’s son-in-law Thomas G. Cornish was in the Navy in World War II, passed the bar in 1949 and practiced law with former Gov. Arthur T. Hannett. He was an avid hunter and kept Labrador dogs. His son, Tim Cornish, recounted an occasion when a dog got out and snatched a turkey from the neighbor’s home. The neighbor was none other than Sen. Dennis Chavez.
“Dad got the turkey back from the dog, washed it off and the senator had the turkey. It must have been kind of a gritty turkey,” Tim Cornish said.
Tim Cornish, 67, is full of stories about his own colorful law career. After graduating from UNM Law School, he went to Socorro where he eventually became deputy district attorney under Eldon Douglas. From there, he headed to Santa Fe where he did a short stint with the Human Services Department.
That’s when the stabbing incident occurred. At a child custody hearing in 1986, a mother enraged at the judge’s decision not to return her child slashed a social worker’s face with a concealed pocket knife. Tim Cornish immediately grabbed the woman to restrain her and was wounded in the stomach. He still has the scar.
“My impression was that this woman was going to kill her (the social worker) and I didn’t think about it. It was just one of those automatic things,” Tim Cornish said.
He recalls another case in which an attorney tried to punch him during a deposition.
“Part of professionalism in the old days was fisticuffs,” said Tim Cornish.
He spent a few years as an assistant attorney general under Attorneys General Paul Bardacke, Hal Stratton and Tom Udall. One of his tasks was to coordinate the border conferences for U.S. and Mexican attorneys general to discuss cases of mutual interest. He believes that prompted an invitation in 1991 by the State Department to go to Latin and Central America to help officials in various countries modernize their judicial processes.
Over the next 15 years, he worked in Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama, sometimes taking his family with him. Dan Cornish vividly remembers his arrival to Guatemala as a teenager. Their car was stopped behind a taxi when suddenly a military truck rolled up, two men with M16 rifles jumped out, dragged a man out of the taxi, threw him into the truck and drove off.
“That was something that really stuck out for me. I was 15 years old, and that was on my ride home from the airport,” Dan Cornish said.
While in Panama, Tim Cornish was nearby when bombers tried to assassinate the country’s attorney general, whose office was in the area.
“I was looking out my window and boom!” he said.
Tim Cornish returned to the U.S. in 2006 and worked from 2008 through 2013 as deputy district attorney in Torrance County. He has been semiretired since 2014.
Now that he, too, is a lawyer, Dan Cornish jokes that his career in civil litigation with the Doughty, Alcaraz & deGraauw law firm won’t be as exciting as his father’s.
But the younger Cornish has already had his share of drama.
Before being accepted to UNM Law School in 2013, 36-year-old Cornish tested out a motley assortment of jobs — UNM academic adviser, director of campus tours, singing waiter at the Macaroni Grill and Shakespearean actor.
In every arena, the law kept calling. Becoming a lawyer seemed the best resolution.
After the rigors of law school and the grind of preparing for the bar exams, finally taking the oath was a “huge deal.” He attended the ceremony with his wife, Tiffani, and their infant son — and perhaps future lawyer — Henry.
Dan’s father, Tim Cornish, was delighted.
“It’s a wonderful thing for me to see. I think he’ll be the best litigator of the lot, practicing with the same ethical and moral framework that his predecessors have done.”