Meet #MOLawyers: Laurence Tucker

Laurence Tucker is a senior counsel at Armstrong Teasdale LLP and served as Missouri Bar president from 1995-1996. From Liberty, Tucker is a graduate of the Duke University School of Law and was admitted to The Missouri Bar in 1972. He is chair of the Judicial Performance Review Committee, which reviews the performances of judges up for retention selected through the Missouri Non-Partisan Court Plan. The committee bases its evaluations on survey results from lawyers and jurors, as well as written opinions and orders prepared by those judges. Visit YourMissouriJudges.org to view the judicial performance review results.

Why is the work of the Judicial Performance Review Committee valuable to lawyers and the public as the November election approaches? 

The information the committee reviews is taken from the responses of people who have had actual experiences with the judges being reviewed. The results of the surveys are presented to the committee in such a way that the committee is not informed of the identities, locations, or the exact roles of each judge reviewed. Every effort has been taken to ensure that neither a conscious nor unconscious bias will influence the work and the report of the committee. As such, the public and the bar can be confident that the committee’s report is soundly based and scrupulously fair. 

What is your proudest moment in your professional career? 

The honor of being selected as Missouri Bar president in 1995 by my colleagues on The Missouri Bar Board of Governors. A close second, if not a tie for first, is seeing my daughter, Lauren Tucker McCubbin, selected as Missouri Bar president in 2022. 

Why did you want to become a lawyer? 

The truth is that I did not know that I wanted to be a lawyer until I was in college. It was only when I realized that I was very interested in the way that we Americans govern ourselves that I understood how important lawyers could be to sustaining and improving our way of life. I wanted to contribute to making sure that our system of law functioned for the benefit of all the people of our nation. 

If you could go back in time and make little changes to your childhood, what is one thing you’d learn and master so you’d be an expert at it today? 

I would have focused more on my baseball skills. I would have learned to hit a breaking ball. 

What’s a local restaurant you would recommend to someone visiting your hometown? 

I would highly recommend the very fine breakfast and lunch restaurant, Ginger Sue’s, in Liberty. 

Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity. Know a lawyer who you think should be featured in “Meet #MOLawyers”? Email Editor Nicole Roberts-Hillen at nhillen@mobar.org.