Founder, Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen
George E. Allen, Sr. was born in 1885 in Lunenburg County, Virginia. He entered the practice of law in 1910 in Victoria, Virginia, after graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law. Allen was a Virginia state senator from 1916 to 1920 and a trial attorney who, with his three sons, founded the law firm of Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen. After practicing law for more than twenty years in southern Virginia, he moved to Richmond in 1931 where he built a reputation as a trial lawyer.
From 1950 to1960, he served as president of the Richmond Bar Association, from 1951-1953 as faculty member of the Law-Science Institute, and from 1953-1954 as a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He was the first president of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, from 1959-1960. In 1965, at the age of 80, he was named the first recipient of the Award for Courageous Advocacy by the American College of Trial Lawyers for representing an African-American Harvard law student accused of felonious assault in 1963 after a scuffle with police. Mr. Allen was a fellow and co-founder of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers. He served as dean of the IATL in 1966.
Allen continued to practice law until his death in 1972, even arguing a Federal Tort Claims Act case before the U.S. Supreme Court just months before his death at the age of 87. In 1976, four years after his death, Mr. Allen's sons, Ashby, Wilbur, and George Jr., of the law firm of Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen, gave a challenge gift to the University of Richmond to establish the George E. Allen Chair in Law as a memorial to their father. It was the first endowed chair in the history of the T. C. Williams School of Law.
© by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
1800s