Robert N. Meals

Robert Nelson "Bob" Meals, Jr. was a lawyer whose career spanned five decades and five state bars. After serving as a U.S. Navy officer from 1964 to 1969, he graduated in 1972 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School with honors and as a member of the Law Review. He began his legal career that same year in Atlanta at the firm of Troutman Sanders, and in 1975 he and two other attorneys formed their own boutique litigation firm, whose clients included the Anheuser-Busch Companies.

Over the course of a 50-year career, Bob passed the bar examinations of five states - Georgia (1972), Florida (1973), Washington (1990), Nevada (2002), and California (2003). After relocating to Washington in 1990, he built a practice defending physicians' professional interests, including economic, credentialing, licensing, privileging, and peer review matters, and was credited with saving the careers of numerous physicians. From 2001 through 2005 he served as general counsel for the Women's Cancer Center, a group of 29 gynecologic oncology surgeons based in California and Nevada.

Bob practiced law in Seattle for 24 years while making his home on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, later dividing his time between Washington and Montana before settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2022. He was remembered for his wit and wide-ranging curiosity, and away from the law he was an avid sailor and a lifelong baseball fan. He died on November 30, 2023.