Saul Olivarez is a solo practitioner in Oklahoma City. He received his JD from Oklahoma City University School of Law in 2006. He founded Oklahoma's Hispanic Bar Association.
If a researcher wishes to use the information gathered in this interview for uses other than educational or scholarly uses, they may do so without further permission from the interview subject.
Below is a short selection of the interview with Saul Olivarez. You can listen to the full interview by visiting the Chickasaw Nation Law Library at Oklahoma City University School of Law.
Below is an excerpt from Mr. Olivarez's interview and a link to download the full transcript.
KEK: What kinds of investigations did you get to work on?
SO: Well, I can’t talk about them specifically but anything from stealing from trust accounts, to domestic violence, to stealing from other lawyers. For example, the case that I worked on, it was a big settlement and a previous lawyer had worked on the case and was fired by the client and it was sent to this new lawyer. Well, they got the big settlement but the first lawyer never got paid for his time. So, he brought an action that was a big mess. So, I think the most interesting one was the domestic violence case, that was actually on a very high profile lawyer here in Oklahoma City and, let me tell you, money doesn’t bring happiness because that was a messed up family.
KEK: How did that experience, working on these ethical violations, how has that influenced you?
SO: Well, I know how important it is now to make sure we do everything correctly. Like, for example, this is kind of funny. I am in the process of switching banks and I wrote a check out of our old trust account and sent it over to immigration to file for a client, forgetting that I had moved funds over there. And so, immigration calls me and says, “You just sent us a bounced check.” So, I had to call the Bar Association and say, “This was a complete mistake, oversight,” because we are very good on our bookkeeping here but it was just a complete oversight that we didn’t pay attention to. So, luckily it all worked it, it’s not a big deal and we have proof that everything was taken care of. But, stuff like that scares you because you could get in trouble because your license can be taken away from you if you do stuff incorrectly. Now, in that situation that wouldn’t be the issue at all. And that was self-reported and taken care of; it was just me being completely dumb and not thinking. But I made good friends with the General Counsel, he did help start the Hispanic Bar Association and, as a joke one day, probably a month or two after I got licensed, he sent me a General Counsel letter that they put in when they send violations and here I was, a month or two out and I was like, “I’m in trouble already, what did I do?” But he was just messing with me.