Paul DeForest Hicks

Paul DeForest Hicks is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School. After practicing law in Denver, Colorado, he returned to New York where he joined J.P. Morgan. Retiring as a Managing Director after more than thirty years with JPM, he began a third career as a writer.

His primary writing interest is the development of the law in America, including biographies of an ancestor who was the first chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court and of an eminent New York lawyer and philanthropist in the Gilded Age.

His third book is a history of The Litchfield Law School (1784-1833), which was widely influential but is not widely known today. Its alumni include two U.S. Vice Presidents (Aaron Burr and John C. Calhoun) as well as three members of the U.S. Supreme Court, one hundred members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and twenty-eight members of the U.S. Senate.

In 2023, his latest book, "The University of Georgia School of Law and Early Legal Education," was published by the UGA Law School and is available online through its library. It traces the development of university and independent law school programs, beginning with William and Mary and the Litchfield Law School.