Necrology

Richard Allen Soden '66

Feb. 16, 1945-Dec. 25, 2023

“Richard was a seminal member of the Boston legal community, committed to the highest standards of the profession. He worked throughout his career for the advancement of diversity in the profession. Keenly aware of the stresses of the profession, he also worked to elevate issues of lawyer well-being and professional integrity, both locally and nationally.” Thus did Hannah L. Kilson, president of the Boston Bar Association, eulogize Richard Allen Soden ’66, who died on Dec. 25, 2023, in Aurora, Colo., while visiting one of his two sons.

Born the son of immigrants from Trinidad and Barbados on Feb. 16, 1945, Richard grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where his doctor father practiced medicine, and came to Hamilton from the McBurney School in Manhattan. When he matriculated, he initially planned to prepare for medical school to follow in his father’s footsteps; however, in the course of his time on the Hill, Richard decided to major in government in preparation for law school. He was in the Emerson Literary Society, on the varsity swim team, and on the staff of WHCL.

On one occasion, a friend set Richard up on a blind date with Marcia LaMonte Mitchell, a student at William Smith College. Arriving at ELS, she was standing in the foyer when Richard came down the stairs to greet her. Following his death, she recalled their first meeting: “In my head I said, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m going to marry that man’,” and so she did on June 7, 1969, in her hometown of Buffalo, while he was a law student at Boston University’s School of Law. 

Earning his Juris Doctor in 1970, Richard clerked for a year for Judge George C. Edwards of the Sixth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. After working as a summer associate at the law firm Goodwin, Procter & Hoar (now Goodwin, Procter LLP), he was hired as an associate in 1971 and its first African American attorney. He made partner in 1979. Richard began his career at a time when Goodwin Procter could have been described as a “white shoe, downtown, exclusively big firm.” He would dedicate himself to the task of diversifying its attorneys and, indeed, to making the same contribution to the Boston legal community as a whole.

Richard specialized in the area of corporate and securities law, corporate finance, corporate governance, contract negotiations, and regulatory compliance. And yet, his work for his clients constituted only his day job. As he described his achievements in 1994: “I’m a hired gun (by) day, so I can do social good at night.” The “social good” he did is nothing short of extraordinary in its breadth.

He served for a time as president of the United South End Settlements, an agency assisting families in that Boston area to achieve economic mobility, including providing children with after-school activities, early childhood education, and other personal development opportunities. He was a director of the Greater Boston Council of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and sat on the executive board of the Northeast Region of the BSA. He chaired the board of the Baker Children’s Center, an entity devoted to helping children with mental health challenges and learning difficulties.

He was a trustee of the Boston Children’s Museum and of Boston University. He sat on the Board of Governors of the New England Aquarium and on the Overseers Advisory Board for WGBH, Boston’s public radio and television station. For a time, he chaired the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, an organization of leaders of the city’s major employers to shape the direction of public policy in the city.

Concurrently, he also served the legal profession, as president at different times of the Boston Bar Association (BBA) and the Boston Bar Foundation, the latter organization dedicated to ensuring access to legal services for clients of limited means. Its work included the establishment of a legal clinic in the Boston Medical Center for those confronting both medical challenges and pressing legal issues at the same time. On the occasion of his assuming the presidency of the BBA in 1995, Goodwin Procter established the Richard Soden Law and Justice Scholarship to support Boston public school students interested in a legal career. Previously, he had founded and subsequently presided over the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association.

He was a trustee of Massachusetts’s Social Law Library. He also served as chair of the steering committee of the Boston Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. 

For a time, Richard chaired the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers Oversight Committee, a reflection of his concern for the emotional well-being of attorneys. His sensitivity to this matter was surely due in part to his own experiences as a young Black attorney in a city not known at the time for welcoming members of minority groups to positions of influence. As a later president of the BBA would observe in her eulogy of Richard: “Publicly owning a difficulty can be a very hard thing for lawyers and others who have invested a lifetime in pursuing high achievement and projecting invincibility.”

That same concern led him to join the American Bar Association’s Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs. He was also a member of the ABA’s Board of Governors, its Business Law Section, the Forum on Entertainment & Sports Industries, and its Center for Racial and Ethnic Diversity, on which he served as budget officer. 

A serious recreational athlete, Richard somehow found time to be the goalie for Goodwin Procter’s hockey team, a scuba diver, and a cyclist. For at least seven years, he participated in the Pan-Mass Challenge, a 192-mile sponsored bike ride that raises funds to support research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Richard retired from Goodwin Procter in 2006, though he continued to be of council for several years thereafter. In 2009, he received the ABA’s Spirit of Excellence Award recognizing his three decades of work promoting diversity in the legal profession. 

It should not be surprising that Richard’s fondest memory of the College was meeting his future wife. Like many alumni, he wrote in his 40th reunion yearbook: “Hamilton’s emphasis on the written and spoken use of the English language has been the foundation of much of my success. Its rigorous academic environment and honor code, despite its reputation as a wild men’s school, created a baseline for a way of life.”

Richard supported the College as regional gift chair for the 175th Anniversary Campaign and on the special gifts committee. He also volunteered through the Career Center to talk with students contemplating law careers.

Richard A. Soden is survived by his wife, two sons, and three grandchildren.

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