The Professional Podcast Network
11363 Thomas Paul Stitt Sr-12 03 24-Lawyer-Matt
Welcome to the Professional Podcast Network, where brilliance meets business. Elevate your brand and supercharge your revenue with inspiring insights and innovation. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. I'm your host Matt and right now my guest is Thomas Paul Stitt Sr., who is a lawyer based out of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. How are you doing today? I'm doing fine, I hope you are too. I'm good, thanks. So what is your area of expertise? I had a tax background but I won't kid you when you live, especially when my first start practicing here in the early '70s. When you live in a community and I'll include the entirely high valley of at that time, probably about 350 to 400,000 people, it's difficult to purely specialize. So I also pursued a general practice, I represent a lot of corporations, I did estate planning for folks and I only ever charged hourly, but people liked what I did and so I saw more and more clients in my business group. And how many years have you been doing this for? Wow, well, depends on how you want to count because I was in the army before I started here and if you count that, that would be, what, 56 years? So what inspired you down your career path? Well, I won't kid you, I was not inspired by a lot of the courses I took in college. There were nice general courses but there was no practical application in my opinion. But when I got out of college, Vietnam was going hot and heavy and I was not a conscientious objector, I wasn't moving to Canada, so I was going to get drafted and the fellow I shared a suite with in college with a major in army intelligence and suggested that I try to apply for and take the test for a direct commission. I did and part of my way along the way, much to my surprise, I got the direct commission as an intelligence officer. I spent two years in Fort Bragg, North Carolina as part of the Continental Army Command Intelligence Center. I tried 26 cases on defense and I was very fortunate, I won 25 of them. So that gave me some very practical experience and I really appreciated it. So when I got out, at least I knew I could try cases and win them. So I came back to eastern Pennsylvania where I had grown up, frankly I had intended to go to Texas and never come back but it didn't work out that way. I had married a gal from here that I had gone to school with and so we had a family and I was busy practicing law and the senior partner of the law firm I joined, a man named George F. Coffin Jr. had taken me under his wing and so he mentored me and I will tell you after about three to five years I swore I had a master's degree in how to practice law. My goal, however, in practicing law was frankly to help people do things they couldn't do for themselves and that's what I've always done, that's been my approach. I always like to be prepared, I like to turn my work out rapidly and that's been the theme of how I practice law. So what would you like our listeners to know about you today? I think that if you find something that you really like to do, dedicate yourself to it and you may be surprised that the parts that can't be boring sometimes aren't so boring when the rest of it is interesting, you're helping people, you're doing things you didn't expect to do and again the greatest thing was whether it was a corporation or an individual or in a state or a trust is helping them do things that they didn't know how to do and which were not simply spelled out somewhere so they could go do it and so what I would like most for people to understand is that if you try hard and if you prepare and pick on something you think you might like, you may do actually, I should say you may really enjoy it, you may make a contribution to society and I also believed in giving back to my community. So I was the senior layperson in my church. I was the president of a theater called the State Theater and when it required renovation I raised two of the four million dollars that were needed. I was chairman of the American Red Cross that we had Valley Chapter, I was the president of the Eastern Public Library, you know just give back, that's all, give back. That's great to hear and for anyone out there who wants to learn more or has any questions what are some of the best ways to get in touch with you? Well, probably my cell phone and I may be asking for a lot of challenges when I do this but that number is 610-217-8699. Texts work best because I am busy, I still work hard and I enjoy what I'm doing so my cell phone could be sitting on my desk but if I'm in a conference in another room I'm not going to be running to back to my desk to pick it up. So text messages work really well because then I know who it is and I know what their question is. Alright, well I want to thank you again for talking with us today and sharing some insight about your profession. You're welcome. Alright, well take care. You too. And to the rest of our listeners stay tuned because we'll be back with more guests after these messages. Welcome to the Professional Podcast Network where brilliance meets business, elevate your brand and supercharge your revenue with inspiring insights and innovation. (upbeat music)