After 14 years at the American Bar Association’s flagship publication, The ABA Journal, 11 of which as its editor and publisher, Gary Hengstler (although no longer a young man) took Horace Greeley’s advice and headed West – to help create the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for the Courts and Media at the National Judicial College on the campus of the University of Nevada, in Reno. He began his duties August 1, 2000.

A career award-winning journalist, he also is a lawyer retaining an active license to practice in Ohio.  According to an American Lawyer Media article, “Hengstler is best known for transforming the ABA Journal from a monthly trade publication perceived as the American Bar Association’s mouthpiece to an independent and sleek, award-winning general interest magazine.”

The ABA Journal is the largest legal periodical in the world with a circulation of more than 380,000.  William Haltom Jr., a Memphis, Tennessee, lawyer who is Chair of the ABA Journal Board of Editors, also was quoted in the article as saying, “Gary really is the architect of the modern ABA Journal.”

Prior to his term at the ABA, where his duties also included that of Associate Executive Director and a member of the Senior Management Group, Hengstler in 1985 created The Texas Lawyer, a weekly legal newspaper based in Austin, Texas.  The paper in 1986 was purchased by the American Lawyer Media Group and remains one of its growing list of publications.

Hengstler’s focus on legal journalism prepared him for his new role as Director of the Center. According to Percy R. Luney Jr., the past President of The National Judicial College who hired him, “Very few people had the unique set of skills working with the media, judges and lawyers that Gary had.”

A native of Wapakoneta, Ohio, Hengstler was lured to journalism during his undergraduate years at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he received his B.S. in education in 1969 and was an award-winning sports columnist for the Ball State Daily News. At the same time, he worked as the sports editor of the Tri-City Journal in Yorktown, Indiana.

Upon graduation, he became the city editor for the Portland (Indiana) Commercial Review in1970. Shortly thereafter, when the managing editor resigned, Hengstler at age 22 became the youngest managing editor of a daily newspaper in Indiana. His investigative series led to the indictment of a local mayor on bribery charges and garnered him the Hoosier State Press Association’s “Best News Story” for 1973.

In late 1973, Hengstler joined the staff of the Elyria (Ohio) Chronicle-Telegram where he became the news editor. There he supervised the editorial conversion of the newspaper to its front-end computerized system. Attending the graphics and design course at the American Press Institute, he redesigned the Chronicle-Telegram shortly thereafter.

In the fall of 1980, Hengstler enrolled at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law’s evening program. Over the next three years, he continued to serve as news editor during the mornings, as a law clerk for the Elyria law firm of Blaszak, Shilling, Coey & Bennett during the afternoons and commuted to Cleveland to earn his law degree from Cleveland State University in 1983. By taking overloads, he finished the four-year program in three years.

After passing the bar exam on his initial try, he practiced law in the same firm. As co-counsel, Hengstler researched and wrote the brief for a case that ultimately set a precedent in Ohio, Reichert vs. Ingersoll, 18 Ohio St. 3d 220 (1985).

In 1985, Butterworth Legal Publishers brought him to Austin, Texas, to create the state’s first weekly legal newspaper. Within a year, more than 5,000 of the state’s 40,000 attorneys had subscribed, prompting the American Lawyer Media to purchase the paper in 1986.

At the time of the sale, however, Hengstler already had accepted the position of news editor of the ABA Journal. His 1987 death penalty article, “Attorneys for the Damned,” was one of three collectively to win “Best News Series” from the American Society of Business Press Editors. It also was a finalist in the prestigious Peter Lisagor competition sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists.

In 1989, Hengstler was named editor and publisher of the ABA Journal. During his 11 years, the magazine:

• was listed from 1992-1998 in the “top 25” in the biennial independent survey of the most influential publications in America.

• won the First Place Gold Award for editorial excellence in the Legal Magazine category of the 1998 Folio Magazine competition.

• won the First Place Gold Award for editorial excellence in the Association Magazine category of the 1999 Folio Magazine competition.

• won more than 127 editorial and design awards, the most ever for the magazine.

His term at the Journal also provided Hengstler with some unique opportunities for individual editorial efforts. His 1992 interview with Justice Thurgood Marshall was only one of six granted by the Justice after he assumed the High Court bench and was the last granted to a periodical before his death.

In 1993, Hengstler went to Israel and Tunisia, immediately after the peace accord was signed by Israel’s Premier Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, to write a series of articles about how the legal system would work under the new arrangement. There he interviewed key Israeli and Palestinian leaders, including Arafat and Joel Singer, chief legal advisor to the Israel Foreign Ministry and one of the key architects of the agreement. The series won “Best News Series” from the American Society of Business Press Editors.

In 1995, he and his staff took a comprehensive look at weaknesses within the legal system. That series, entitled “Troubled Justice,” won “Best Feature Series” from the American Society of Business Press Editors.

In 1996, near the very end of the Bosnian-Serb war, Hengstler flew on a UN cargo plane into Sarajevo to do a series on how the legal profession coped during the conflict and how the new Constitutional Court, with its unique inclusion of justices from other nations, would operate. His series, “Bosnia: Out of the Rubble,” won “Best News Series” from the American Society of Business Press Editors.

Throughout his career, Hengstler often has spoken to numerous organizations on law and journalism matters. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the Ohio State Bar Association, has served on board of the Society of National Association Publications, and, since 1990, has been listed in Marquis “Who’s Who in America.”