Eric Conn gave Kentucky lawyers a black eye. The new bar president wants to fix that.
When Bill Garmer was growing up in Carrollton in the early 1960s, the best show in town was in the Carroll County courthouse.
“We’d watch trials a lot, especially in the summertime,” Garmer said. “I just kind of always thought I wanted to be a lawyer.”
Garmer, who has practiced law in Lexington for more than 40 years, was installed last month as president of the Kentucky Bar Association, which oversees the state’s 18,500 licensed lawyers. He said he’s only the seventh Lexington lawyer to head the statewide professional organization in the past 50 years.
Garmer takes office at a time when the rule of law is under assault from some politicians and Kentucky’s legal profession has been embarrassed by one of its own. Eastern Kentucky lawyer Eric Conn went on the lam last month after pleading guilty to a $550 million Social Security fraud scheme that included bribing a judge.
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Garmer has been active in legal organizations and politics and was chairman of the state Democratic Party in 2004. He has been a deacon and an elder at Lexington’s First Presbyterian Church and has served on the board of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence since 2011.
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