Jeffrey William Clark - Houston, TX

Overview

I am Jeffrey William Clark, supposedly a direct descendant of William Clark of Lewis & Clark expedition fame. While I am not completely sure of that, I do know I was born in Houston, Texas in 1959 and have lived and worked in and around Harris County ever since. My parents brought me up in Oak Forest and the Heights where I attended school and church.

My personal expedition seemed to head me toward becoming a real estate attorney. I graduated with honors from S.P. Waltrip Sr. High School in 1977 and proceeded to college at Texas A&M University where I graduated with a B.S. degree in psychology in May, 1981. I pursued minor fields of study in education, sciences and philosophy.

After college I worked at various labor and sales jobs in the residential construction industry until the economy soured in the mid 1980’s. Then I obtained a Texas Real Estate Broker’s license which I still maintain to this day. During that time I became acquainted with a real estate lawyer by the name of Dan W. McCrary who is also a native Houstonian. The stories he told and enthusiasm he displayed for his career made me say to myself, "that is what I want to do".

I began the study of law in 1984 at South Texas College of Law in Houston where I was invited to serve on the law review and made the dean’s list three times. I declined the law review because I was also working full time and there simply were not enough hours in the day. I was successful in moot court-appellate advocacy where I was a quarterfinalist in the Leroy Jeffers Moot Court Competition in 1986. I graduated with the degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence in December of 1987, passed the February 1988 bar exam and became licensed by the Supreme Court of Texas and a member of the State Bar in May of 1988.

Moreover, while in law school I was an instructor of real estate law and mathematics for a very good proprietary real estate licensing school. However, I was the real student because these experiences taught me the integration of business and legal principles with human personalities. Additionally, I assisted in the development of course curricula and authored a workbook. I served there from 1985 through 1990 and then became an adjunct instructor of American government for Tomball College from 1991 through 1996.

As a new attorney in 1989, I worked on a contract basis for the Law Office of F. James Wunderlich in the collection of ad valorem taxes for Klein Independent School District. This enabled me to pursue my own practice while developing knowledge and experience in real estate and business law. Then, in 1995 I earned board certification in residential real estate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and my practice evolved away from tax litigation toward more document preparation.

In 1996, Dan and I decided to form the partnership of McCrary & Clark, L.L.P., which allowed us to combine our talents and resources. His vast experience in commercial transactions and bank representation merged with my own knowledge of document preparation and collections. This has created a full service business, banking and real estate law firm for Houston and its growing metropolitan areas. It is ironic that our office, which Dan had chosen prior to the formation of our firm, is directly across the street from where my dad had worked from the 50’s to the 80’s. Both of our fathers are gone now, but there is not a day that goes by that we do not think about them and how they worked so hard for us.

In case you are curious, my personal interests include my wife, my children and my mom, original music production (www.mp3.com/roomabovethegarage), riding my Harley Davidson Fatboy (www.harleydavidson.com), listening to talk radio (www.rushlimbaugh.com) and playing racquetball at the YMCA.