Steve Nash / Brownwood Bulletin
It may not entirely accurate to say a trial in fictional Maycomb, Ala. in the 1930s would go on to launch Steve Ellis’ 44-year legal career decades later.
But it came close.
Seated in his office off the 35th Judicial District Courtroom in the Brown County Courthouse, Ellis fetched a jacket that held a DVD of the movie “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
The late Gregory Peck’s portrayal of small-town lawyer Atticus Finch in the 1962 movie inspired Ellis, who saw the movie at a Waco drive-in when he was an impressionable junior high school student.
“I knew no lawyers,” the 69-year-old Ellis said. “No one in my family was a lawyer. I never thought about being a lawyer. I was intrigued by this and it just was an inspiring story.”