For almost 40 years, Bernard Smalley has devoted his legal career to advocating on behalf of victims of corporate or professional negligence. He is a partner at Raynes & Lawn, a law firm.

As a young man, Mr. Smalley cut hair in his father’s West Philadelphia barbershop, where he met William H. Hastie, the first
African American to become Chief Judge of a Federal Court of Appeals in the United States. It was then that Chief Judge Hastie planted the seed, along with Ronald Davenport, later Dean of Duquesne Law School, Pat Swygert, later of Temple Law School and President of Howard University, and Judge Harvey N. Schmidt, to launch a career of serving his community by being an attorney and counselor.

A well-recognized and accomplished trial attorney, Mr. Smalley is a Fellow of the prestigious International Academy of Trial Lawyers, which limits its membership to 500 lawyers in the United States, and the American College of Trial Lawyers. He has been selected to the Pennsylvania “Super Lawyer” list every year since 2004, and his story was picked as the cover story in 2020. He lectures on trial techniques before national, state, and local trial lawyers and bar associations.

In January of 2021, Mr. Smalley was unanimously elected President of the Board of Directors of City Trusts. He is the first African American to lead the Trust, which oversees Girard College and Wills Eye Hospital, among other Trusts in its 153-year history. Bernie and his wife Jacquelyn live in West Philadelphia, where they grew up.