Former President of County, State Bar : Attorney A. Stevens Halsted Dies at 78

A. Stevens Halsted, a former president of both the Los Angeles County and State Bar associations and a third-generation Californian whose family settled much of what is now Alhambra, died Sunday at home in Pasadena.

Halsted was 78 and died of apparent heart failure.

Halsted received his undergraduate degree from Stanford in 1929 and his law degree from Harvard in 1932, the same year he was first admitted to the California and Los Angeles Bar associations. He headed the local Bar in 1961, the state group in 1966-67 and was a founding director of the Los Angeles County Bar Foundation, an organization devoted to projects for the improvement of the administration of justice.

He also served on the Board of Trustees of Scripps College, the boards of the Polytechnic School and Westridge School for Girls, both of Pasadena, and was a trustee of The Hollenbeck Home of Los Angeles, the oldest retirement home in California.

Over the years Halsted, a specialist in corporate representation and estate planning, worked with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, lectured at the USC Law School and was a member of law school boards at USC and Stanford. For some time he authored a column, “Silver Memories,” a Los Angeles Bar Journal feature which dealt with personalities and events of the past.

In 1969 he was a founding partner in the merger that resulted in the law firm of MacDonald, Halsted & Laybourne of Los Angeles and in 1980 was given the Shatlock-Price Award from the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. for his service to the legal profession.

A longtime member and past president of Town Hall, Halsted is survived by his wife, Virginia, a son, A. Stevens III, a daughter, Mrs. Willis Brown, and three grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Friday at All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena.

In lieu of flowers the family suggests contributions to the Polytechnic or Westridge schools or Stanford University or Scripps College.