Arsenio L. Mims Elected President-Elect of the Mound City Bar Association
Dowd Benett LLP is proud to announce that on June 24, 2026, Partner Arsenio L. Mims was elected as the Mound City Bar Association’s (MCBA) new President-Elect. Mims will serve as President-Elect for the 2026–2027 bar year and will subsequently assume the role of President of the Mound City Bar Association for the 2027–2028 bar year. Mims has a deep history of dedicated leadership within the MCBA. Since 2021, he has served as the Chair of the Association’s prominent annual Legal Legends event—an initiative fully sponsored by Dowd Bennett since 2015. The Legal Legend award was established by the MCBA to pay homage to trailblazing individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the St. Louis legal profession or have historically been avid supporters of African American attorneys. Additionally, Mims served as the MCBA’s Recording Secretary for consecutive terms during the 2024–2025 and 2025–2026 bar years.
In what marks a remarkable full-circle moment, Mims will be officially sworn in on Saturday, June 27, 2026, at the Mound City Bar Association and Mound City Bar Foundation’s Annual Hon. Scovel T. Richardson Scholarship Dinner. This year’s prestigious gala is taking place at the historic Chase Park Plaza. Fourteen years prior, in 2012, Mims attended this very dinner as a law student at the University of Missouri School of Law to receive the Hon. Scovel T. Richardson Scholarship. The scholarship’s namesake, Judge Scovel Richardson, was a monumental figure in legal history. He was the first African American member of the St. Louis Bar, a past president of both the Mound City Bar Association and the National Bar Association, and was appointed to the Federal Parole Board by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. As a federal judge, Richardson dedicated his career to improving the judiciary system by making it more responsive to minorities.
Founded on January 7, 1922, as the St. Louis Negro Bar Association, the MCBA was organized at a time when Black lawyers were excluded from joining the all-white St. Louis Bar Association. Today, the MCBA stands as the oldest and largest African American bar association west of the Mississippi River.