University of Tulsa College of Law
Bryon Helm took the scenic route to the law profession—literally. After graduating from Oklahoma State University, he set his sights on a career in landscape design, specializing in sustainable spaces.
Before embarking on a Master’s Degree in Landscape Design at the University of Oklahoma, Helm took a trip to Europe with his wife. While waiting for his flight home, the Tulsa native received a surprising call—the Landscape Design program had only one student (Helm) enrolled. “Did he still want to join?,” they asked. He did. But after giving the world’s smallest university program the old college try (pun intended), a semester in, Helm bowed out.
A Turn Toward the Law
“For a long time, in the background of my mind, I said you’ve got to be a lawyer,” Helm says. “But it was a really obvious choice that I didn’t necessarily want to make, because it seemed so serious.” Helm eventually acquiesced to his legal calling, heading to the University of Tulsa Law School. While riding his scooter to class one day, he bumped into Dan Smolen, a casual acquaintance at the time. The two spoke briefly—a fortuitous encounter that paved the way for Helm’s career at Smolen & Roytman.
Civil Rights—An Unexpected Path
Although he never set out to focus on civil rights cases, the specialty ignited a passion and fire in Helm from the get-go. “It felt like I was immediately in my lane,” Helm says. He quickly discovered that cases ranging from excessive force by police officers to wrongful deaths in county jails take a fearless and determined lawyer.
“The cruelness of what’s going on in our backyard is shocking,” says Helm, pointing toward the Tulsa county jail up the street. The stories paint a consistent and frightening scene of brutality—often caught on video and audio.
In describing one wrongful death, he says: “in the video, they’re making fun of him, telling him he’s faking, and they’re not calling an ambulance.” In that instance, a federal jury awarded the family of 26-year-old Terral Ellis, who died of sepsis 12 days after entering jail perfectly healthy, $33M.
When it comes to research, Helm’s tenacity knows no bounds. In the Ellis case, for instance, evidence initially pointed to a weak case. But Helm noticed that a few of the 12 days of video—shot from 20 angles—contained faint audio demonstrating Ellis crying out for help. Helm sent the audio to a music producer friend, who enhanced it, enabling the Smolen & Roytman team to prove that the jail nurse denied care and threatened to chain Ellis to the floor.
How to Decompress
With a day job he describes as “constantly getting yelled at,” Helm, unsurprisingly, focuses his free time on less heavy pursuits. He spends weekends playing Pokemon with his wife and young son, strumming his guitar and taking photos of whatever catches his eye on a given day. “It’s nice to have peaceful hobbies,” Helm explains.
