It is a Zoo Out There- A Non-Traditional Journey In and Around the Legal World with William Evans

Bill EvansDuring the Fall of 2020, the TAMU Law Energy, Environmental, and Natural Resource Systems Law Program organized a speaker series that featured practitioners in the field. The series sought to bring legal professionals from the environmental and natural resource sector to Texas A&M. Williams Evans of the Dallas Zoo kicked off the series on September 17th. Evans, who recently retired as the in-house counsel for the Dallas Zoo, sought to bring a different perspective to what careers can look like in the legal sector. 

Evans did not begin his legal career in a typical fashion, nor did he end it in one. He graduated from Marshall University in 1968 with a BBA in Accounting. After two years in the Army, he began a finance career with a large corporation in Cleveland. Evans attended Cleveland State University Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at night and, after being admitted to the Ohio Bar, decided that he preferred his corporate finance career. In that role, he worked with lawyers from Wall Street to Anchorage on financial transactions. 

Evans and his wife, Julie, have been very active in conservation efforts and have visited zoos across the country regularly with their children. Upon moving to Dallas with the corporation, Julie started volunteering at the Dallas Zoo, and they both became very involved with the Zoo’s programs.  After leaving the corporation, Evans spent 20 years managing the operations of large law firms in Dallas.  While not practicing law, it gave Evans knowledge of the “business of law.”  Finally, Evans was asked to take a significant role in forming a nonprofit to operate the Dallas Zoo and become their CFO in 2009. 

In 2016, four decades after receiving his J.D., Evans began using his legal education as Special Counsel for the Zoo. This past summer, he retired from the Zoo and is now Project Executive and Senior Advisor to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. He now plays a significant role in the financial aspects and contracts of the Fund’s new facility currently under construction in Rwanda. 

Evans began his presentation with an overview of how zoos are regulated under the oversight of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which regulates how zoos are maintained and how animals are treated. The USDA periodically makes unannounced visits to inspect conditions and look for regulatory violations. Zoos are also accredited separately by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Evans also noted that he has had to deal with the Freedom of Information Act and its corresponding Texas statute in response to public requests, though he explained that nonprofits are not necessarily subject to those requirements. 

Evans continued with his presentation by highlighting the typical kinds of cases and legal questions he dealt with as the general counsel. Legal matters at a zoo vary and include “slip and fall” tort actions, labor and employment matters, trademarks, real estate issues, and many contracts. In many situations, in-house legal counsel has to engage outside counsel with expertise in certain matters, e.g., trademarks. Evans also explained that force majeure clauses within contracts were a hot topic, even for the zoo due to the pandemic. 

Evans also recanted his favorite case from his career. His favorite case was his most stressful one - involving the importation of elephants from Swaziland. Due to growing populations, the elephants had to be either culled or distributed to conservation facilities or zoos. Several U.S. zoos joined together to transport the elephants to the United States to stabilize and diversify the genetic pool of elephants in the U.S. The complexity of the operation included obtaining import permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency, which involves a 2-year process, and export permits from Swaziland. It also required arranging air travel, the loading and unloading processes, veterinary care, and over-land transportation of the elephants. Evans said that the elephants could not be transported until the authorities approved permits and transportation, but once everything was ready and the actual transport started, it could not be stopped.  Elephants had to be loaded into specially made crates, loaded on large trucks, and driven to the airport, then loaded onto a chartered 747 cargo aircraft. The zoos anticipated that an animal rights group would attempt to stop the export and engaged outside legal counsel early in the project. Late in the process, an animal rights group did initiate an action in U.S. District Court seeking a temporary restraining order. However, because of the prior legal preparation, the zoos successfully defended against the suit, which allowed the elephants to arrive in the U.S safely.

At the end of his presentation, Evans reminisced about how proud he was of his career and spent his time doing things that he loved and found fulfilling. He commented that his legal education was critical in everything he did. Even though some of his career choices were scary, like leaving a good job to help start a new nonprofit to operate a zoo, he always chose work that he knew would be worth doing. Evans encouraged the students always to keep that in mind when working - do what is worth doing.