“I returned home to Oklahoma in 1976, after graduating from Harvard Law School at a time when young African-Americans had to be from Oklahoma to want to return there. When I received the opportunity to attend Harvard Law School many of the community elders, who I then thought of as “the old people,” had invested their hopes in me. I returned home with the resolve to build on the legacy which my late father Rev. Robert H. Alexander, Sr. and other civil rights giants in Oklahoma had created for young people of my generation. I was further determined to accomplish in Oklahoma whatever it was at that time assumed that a black man could not accomplish.”

Robert H. Alexander, Jr.

In 1969 I graduated from the last class of Oklahoma City's Douglass High School in which the students had been de facto segregated from kindergarten through twelfth grade. I attended college at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and graduated in the top 1% of my class, while also working fifty-five hours per week to help pay for my college expenses and while serving as the executive officer of my ROTC battalion. Upon graduation, I was also inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army.

I returned home to Oklahoma in 1976, after graduating from Harvard Law School at a time when young African-Americans had to be from Oklahoma to want to return there. When I received the opportunity to attend Harvard Law School many of the community elders, who I then thought of as “the old people,” had invested their hopes in me. I returned home with the resolve to build on the legacy which my late father Rev. Robert H. Alexander, Sr. and other civil rights giants in Oklahoma had created for young people of my generation. I was further determined to accomplish in Oklahoma whatever it was at that time assumed that a black man could not accomplish.

I began my legal career by serving as a law clerk for the honorable William J. Holloway, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Thereafter, I became the first African American to be hired by and later made partner in a major Oklahoma law firm, because I was motivated to show that a “brother” could make partner. In 1986, I was a finalist for a United States District Court judgeship. In February of 1988, I established The Law Office of Robert H. Alexander, Jr., p.c. to also prove in Oklahoma that a black owned firm could well serve the same type of clientele that only the large majority firms had to that date represented.

I began my practice with no clients, no prospects and an infant daughter. My mother was my unpaid receptionist and sole staff. Within months, my wife and I were expecting our second daughter. The first rule for achieving success is to commit. I hitched up my britches and totally committed to making my fledgling firm succeed, because I had to succeed.

Being mindful of one of my Daddy's favorite sermons on the parable of being a faithful servant over a few things and ultimately becoming a ruler over many, I was at first entrusted very minor corporate matters by my trusting clients. Now my clients entrust to my firm the defense of their matters throughout the United States, where the claims assert damages of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. I have framed near my desk an index card listing my original monthly expenses of $575.34, which I once had to struggle to pay.

From that humble beginning, I am immensely proud that I and the people who have helped me have built a nationally respected law firm which now occupies the entire 24th floor of Oklahoma's most historic skyscraper. The Alexander firm is national counsel for Wal-Mart in the Vioxx cases. I was one of a select number of national trial counsel for GlaxoSmithKline in the Baycol cases. The Alexander firm successfully defended Purdue Pharmaceuticals in all the Oklahoma OxyContin cases. We represent other pharmaceutical manufacturers in cases where entire product lines are under attack and defend numerous cases for major oil companies, products and premises containing asbestos as well as automobile and other mechanical product manufacturers.

The history of the Alexander firm has been well chronicled in feature articles appearing in such publications as The National Law Journal (“Zero to Fortune 500 Clients”) and Lawyers Weekly USA (“Small Firm Lawyer 'Does the Impossible'”), to name but a few. The infant daughter, Blayne, who in 1988 caused me to resolve that failure was not an option is now an honors sophomore at Duke University. My wife Annita is the firm's managing attorney and our younger daughter Blake is a high school junior.

One of America's great business titans and innovators Sam Walton has said that business opportunities are best identified when one swims against prevailing views. When I began the Alexander firm only huge law firms-and no minority firms-represented major corporations in America. I am unalterably convinced that only by swimming contrary to conventional wisdom did my firm find its niche as a small nationally respected highly skilled trial firm. One might say that Oklahoma is a most unlikely place for a small minority law firm to develop a national practice and clientele. Yet, Bentonville, Arkansas is an even more unlikely location in which to find the world's largest company.

The Alexander firm is distinguished in its cost-efficiency and its effectiveness. The former is a given by-product of being small. The latter is a requirement for a firm that is small. I believe that if you are going to be small, you had better be good.

The Alexander firm's efficiency and responsiveness were touted by, among others, the Assistant General Counsel of Glaxo Wellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) in the referenced article appearing in The National Law Journal. With respect to the efficiencies of a small, highly skilled firm, my abiding belief is that you can send in 100 kittens or one tiger and accomplish the same mission, for less.

Competing law firms often unwittingly give my firm an advantage, because they refuse to believe me when I tell them that no one sends my firm the many dangerous cases we defend, just because they want to give a “colored” lawyer some business. We obtain results. My firm's clients attest to the quality of the Alexander firm's work.

The quality and prestige of the Alexander firm permits us to recruit our attorneys from throughout the United States. The Alexander firm's lawyers include licensed members of the bar in Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, California and Illinois. My firm's attorneys are law school graduates of Notre Dame, Georgetown, University of Tulsa, University of Oklahoma, University of California at Davis and Harvard. (See Attorneys). The ethnic and gender composition of the Alexander firm's attorneys includes Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, women and men. I am proud of my firm's diversity and minority status, the high example we set and the opportunities we create for others.

The Alexander firm is also a good citizen and gives scholarships to underprivileged students of all races - in the names of my parents. The latter scholarships are in addition to the minority law scholarship initiative described elsewhere in this website. (See Community).

The Alexander firm is also a leader in technology and has a secure internal computer system which is state of the art. The Alexander firm was selected by the United States District Court as part of the Beta Group to launch the federal court's electronic filing program for the Western District of Oklahoma. The Alexander firm's Executive Administrator / Information Technology Manager is Systems Engineer trained by IBM. She is A+ Certified, Microsoft Certified and is a Ph.D. candidate in the field of occupational education.

Every lawyer in the Alexander firm honors my firm's central tenet that clients are not a birthright. We must earn the right to serve our clients every day. We do our clients proud on every matter which is entrusted to our care.