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OSBA elects new president-elect
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: May 18, 2012
Jonathan Hollingsworth, Dayton-area attorney and the grandson of Arkansas sharecroppers, has become the president-elect of the Ohio State Bar Association.
Hollingsworth won election over his friend, Akron attorney Jeffrey Heintz, in what was a very respectful and collegial campaign. Both men had served together on the OSBA’s board of governors during its most recent term.
Hollingsworth’s newest position is another step in a lifelong path of involvement in the legal profession. He said that he was first inspired to become a lawyer when he was about 10 years old, although that inspiration did not come from any particular event. He just felt at one point that he wanted to pursue a legal career.
Six years earlier, his mother had moved to Lima from a sharecropper’s farm in Arkansas, where the family had lived under poverty conditions.
“The house was on stilts, with slat floorboards that had spaces between them—no carpet or linoleum,” said Hollingsworth. There was no plumbing. His single mother decided to leave that place and join her sister in Ohio.
“There is an impression that many lawyers are born with silver spoons in their mouths,” said Hollingsworth. “Not me.”
At the same age of 10, he also began playing football, an avocation that he pursued through high school and college (waylaid by injury when he was a college freshman at Harvard).
(The former star running back, although not a Brown’s fan, does enthusiastically support the team’s drafting of fellow running back Trent Richardson.)
Hollingsworth received his undergraduate degree in 1980 from Harvard University and his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1983, and he holds both institutions in very high regard.
Returning to Ohio, he took a position at Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP. His career evolved to include a shareholder position at the Dayton firm of Washington & Hollingsworth. He is now principal in the firm of J. Hollingsworth & Associates, LLC, where he concentrates on litigation, employment, corporate and business, insurance defense, medical malpractice, personal injury and legal disciplinary matters.
His successful legal career has been complimented with service to local and state bar associations.
He is a former president of the Dayton Bar Association, and has volunteered and been asked to serve on various OSBA boards, including the board of governors.
He has chaired on the board’s membership, public & media relations and publications committee and has served on its audit committee. He also is a past chair of the board of commissioners on grievances and discipline for the Supreme Court of Ohio and has served on the Supreme Court of Ohio task force on the code of judicial conduct and the task force on rules of professional conduct.
He is most interested in the work that he was asked to do as chair of the OSBA’s advisory council on diversity initiatives. When that advisory council was formed in 2009, Hollingsworth was asked to take the chair’s position, which he will now have to relinquish in order to perform his new OSBA duties.
First, Hollingsworth said that his job until taking the president’s position is to support the work of the recently-installed OSBA president, Judge Patrick Fischer of Cincinnati.
He said that, during his tenure, he will emphasize the growth of membership and particularly the growth of diversity of the membership of OSBA.
“African Americans are about 13 percent of the population, but only comprise 4 or 5 percent of OSBA,” he said. “With other minorities, the percentages are even lower. It is important to me that we reach out to the underserved groups, to minorities, in both our profession and to our clientele. We will continue to do what we can to let people know that our door is always open and that there is room for everyone under a very large tent.”
Hollingsworth tells the story of rearing his children, always telling them that family was permanent, while friends would come and go.
“Family is who you can rely on when times are tough,” he said.
He sees the OSBA and the legal profession as family, one that should take care of its own.
And he said that he has exactly the same vision for his tenure as everyone who has ever held that position.
“I want to make this organization better than it was when I arrived,” he said.
Hollingsworth is married to Linda K. Hollingsworth. The Dayton residents have five children (Christopher, Kimberly, Demetrius, Bradford and Natasha), all college graduates, and six grandchildren.