Biographies
Alfred P. Carlton
Jr., ABA President
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Alfred P.
Carlton Jr. of North Carolina, a partner with Kilpatrick Stockton LLP,
a full-service international law firm with more than 520 attorneys, is
President of the American Bar Association. He has a long career in
general corporate law with an emphasis on regulated industries,
corporate and public finance and financial and nonprofit institutions.
Mr. Carlton's most recent post in the ABA is as chair of the Standing
Committee on Judicial Independence, where he worked to promote
awareness of the need for an independent judiciary and reform of
judicial elections. Mr. Carlton received his Bachelor of Science degree
in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill in 1969, and went on to earn a Masters of Public
Administration from the University of Dayton in 1973 and a Juris Doctor
from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1975. |
John J. Curtin,
Committee Member
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John J. Curtin,
Jr. has been Chairman of the Litigation area of Bingham Dana LLP. Mr.
Curtin has served as President of the American Bar Association and
Boston Bar Association and was Chairman of the Section of Litigation of
the ABA and has chaired or served on many of the ABA’s committees. He
is presently a member of the ABA House of Delegates. He is a fellow in
the American College of Trial Lawyers. At Boston College Law School he
has taught trial practice for many years and has taught Federal Courts
and Antitrust Law. |
Dennis E. Curtis,
Committee Member
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Dennis E.
Curtis is a Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he
teaches courses on the legal profession, criminal procedure, and
campaign financing. Professor Curtis founded the clinical program at
Yale in 1970, taught there for a decade, then at the University of
Southern California Law School, where he directed that institution's
clinical program. When in Los Angeles, Professor Curtis served a five
year term as the first President of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission,
a city-chartered body that supervises public financing of campaigns,
city officials' receipt of contributions and gifts, and related issues
of governmental ethics. Professor Curtis returned to Yale in 1997.
Professor Curtis is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and
of the Yale Law School. He practiced in Washington, D.C. prior to
teaching. |
Susan Saab Fortney
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Susan Saab Fortney is a
Professor at Texas Tech University School of Law. Prior to joining the
faculty, she practiced law in Austin, specializing in legal malpractice
defense. Professor Fortney's research and writing focuses on the law
firm governance and ethics issues. She has conducted two empirical
studies on law firm ethics. The last study analyzed the effects of law
firm culture and billable hour expectations. Her 2002 speaking
engagements included a in-house ethics panel at the ABA National
Conference of Professional Responsibility and an interactive
presentation on the billable hour derby. Professor Fortney works with
numerous programs, including the ABA Central and East European Law
Initiative and the Supreme Court of Texas Grievance Oversight
Committee. During 2001, Professor Fortney taught comparative legal
ethics as a Fulbright Scholar in Slovenia. |
Susan
Hackett, Committee Liaison
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Susan Hackett
is the liaison to the Commission for the American Corporate Counsel
Association (ACCA). She is Senior Vice President and General Counsel
ACCA in Washington, DC. Her duties include the development of ACCA’s
communication and web resources, its advocacy agenda on issues of
concern to the in-house profession, and corporate counsel pro bono and
diversity initiatives. She is a 1986 graduate of the University of
Michigan Law School, and is a frequent lecturer and author on issues
affecting corporate practice. In addition to serving on this ABA
commission, Ms. Hackett is a liaison to the ABA’s Commission on
Multijurisdictional Practice, and a member of the board of National
Association for Public Interest Law/Equal Justice Works. |
Victor P. Henderson
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Victor P. Henderson is a partner in the
firm's litigation department, with a distinguished career in both the
public and private sectors. A former Congressional staff member and
Counsel to a committee in the United States House of Representatives,
Mr. Henderson's practice includes trial and appellate work, in both
state and federal court, in cases involving product liability,
securities disputes, contracts, RICO, employment matters and general
commercial litigation. Prior to becoming an attorney, Mr. Henderson
practiced as a Certified Public Accountant. Mr. Henderson is active in
both Bar activities and the wider community. He is a member of the
Board of Directors for the Public Interest Law Initiative, a prior
member of the Board of Managers for the Chicago Bar Association, a past
financial secretary for the Cook County Bar Association and a former
board member of the Cook County Bar Association - Community Law
Project. Mr. Henderson has represented numerous individuals and
non-profit organizations in consumer fraud actions, contract disputes
and felony criminal charges. He is a former Chairman of the Chicago
Committee on Minorities In Large Law Firms and he is a contributing
columnist for The Chicago Lawyer Magazine.
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Robert E. Hirshon,
ABA Immediate Past President
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Robert
Hirshon, a native of Portland, Maine, is the immediate past president
of the American Bar Association. He concentrates his practice in
commercial litigation and legislative and regulatory advocacy at
Drummond, Woodsum & MacMahon in Portland. He represents banks,
insurance companies, trade associations and government entities. Mr.
Hirshon joined Drummond, Woodsum upon graduation from law school in
1973. He assisted in developing the firm's Financial Services Group,
serving as its first chair. He was selected as lead litigation counsel
for the Resolution Trust Corporation in Maine and New Hampshire. He has
twice served on the firm's board of directors. Mr. Hirshon received his
bachelor's degree with distinction from the University of Michigan in
1970, and went on to receive his Juris Doctor there in 1973. In law
school, Mr. Hirshon was an editor of the Michigan Journal of Law
Reform. |
Kathleen Hopkins,
Committee Liaison
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Kathleen
Hopkins is the liaison to the Commission from the ABA’s Business Law
Section and is also a member of the GPSS and RPPT sections. She
recently founded a new law firm with three of her colleagues: the Real
Property Law Group, in Seattle, Washington. Prior to that adventure,
she was an associate in large and mid-sized firms, and she brings to
the Commission the big-firm associate, younger lawyer and small firm
experiences. Ms. Hopkins is the past president of Washington’s Young
Lawyers Division, she is currently the vice chair of the BLS’s Pro Bono
Committee, on the editorial board of the ABA’s Business Law Today
magazine, a member of the ABA House of Delegates and the reporter for
its Credentials and Admissions Committee. |
Anastasia D. Kelly,
Committee Co-Chair
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Anastasia
D. Kelly is Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Sears,
Roebuck and Co. She reports to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Alan J. Lacy. Ms. Kelly has responsibility for the Law Department and
the Office of the Corporate Secretary. She has been with Sears since
March, 1999. Previously, Ms. Kelly was senior vice president, general
counsel and corporate secretary for Fannie Mae in Washington DC. Prior
to joining Fannie Mae, she was a partner at Wilmer, Cutler &
Pickering in Washington DC, which she joined in 1985, where she
practiced in the area of corporate and securities law. From 1981 to
1985, she was with the law firm of Carrington, Coleman, Sloman &
Blumenthal in Dallas TX. Ms. Kelly was graduated cum laude from Trinity
College and received her law degree magna cum laude from George
Washington University National Law Center. Ms. Kelly is on the board of
directors of the American Corporate Counsel Association, Lawyers for
Children America, and is a member of the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars. |
Esther F. Lardent,
Committee Member
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Esther F.
Lardent is President and chief operating officer of The Pro Bono
Institute at Georgetown University Law Center (PBI), a national law and
policy non-profit organization. PBI is committed to identifying and
implementing effective and innovative strategies that promote access to
justice. Its programs include the highly-respected Law Firm Pro Bono
Project, administered in cooperation with the American Bar Association,
the Reinventing Pro Bono Project, which provides technical assistance
and capacity building support to a wide range of public interest
programs, and its newest effort, CorporateProBono.Org, in partnership
with the American Corporate Counsel Association. Ms. Lardent, an
adjunct professor at Georgetown, has taught professional responsibility
and ethics at law schools across the country and authored a number of
law review articles. |
Carl A. Leonard
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Carl A. Leonard joined
Hildebrandt International (a management consulting firm specializing in
the legal profession) following a 26-year career with Morrison &
Foerster. After practicing law at Morrison for 15 years as a general
corporate partner, he was the firm's Chairman for 10 years. He is a
Principal of Hildebrandt International and Director of The Hildebrandt
Institute, the educational arm of Hildebrandt International dedicated
to leadership and skills development for managing partners and practice
leaders. He is a Visiting Professor in the MBA Program in Law Firm
Management, Nottingham Law School, England, and a Lecturer at Columbia
University Business School. |
Jeffrey F. Liss,
Committee Co-Chair
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Jefferey Liss is the
Chief Operating Officer of Piper Rudnick LLP and serves on the firm's
Executive, Policy and Strategic Planning Committees. He maintains an
active practice as a civil litigator, with experience in a number of
fields including environmental and insurance coverage law. Mr. Liss is
a long-standing member of the adjunct faculty of Georgetown University
Law Center (Business Arbitration, Remedies, Legal History), and he has
also taught as a visiting or adjunct professor at the law schools of
the University of Michigan, the University of Maryland and American
University. In addition to private practice, Mr. Liss has practiced in
the public sector as a Special Government Employee assisting the Office
of the White House Counsel in several Cabinet-level confirmations
(1996-97, concurrent with practice), and as a judicial law clerk to the
Honorable Charles R. Richey, U.S. District Judge (1975-77). |
Charles E. McCallum
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Charles E.
McCallum is a partner in the firm of Warner Norcross & Judd LLP in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was Managing Partner from 1992-97. He
is a member of the American Law Institute, a Fellow of the American
College of Law Practice Management, and a member of the Association of
Professional Responsibility Lawyers. He is a past Chairperson of the
Business Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan. Mr. McCallum has
served on the Council of the American Bar Association Section of
Business Law and is co-chair of the Section's Committee on Professional
Conduct. He is a past chair of the Section's Committee on Law Firms and
its Committee on Multidisciplinary Practice. Mr. McCallum served as a
member of the ABA Commission on Multijurisdictional Practice and is a
member of the International Bar Association's Special Committee on
Multijurisdictional Practice. He is a member of the ABA Task Force on
Corporate Responsibility and of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics
and Professional Responsibility. Mr. McCallum is listed in Who's Who in
American Law and The Best Lawyers in America. He is a graduate of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S. Mathematics 1960) and
Vanderbilt University Law School (J.D. 1964). He was a Fulbright
Scholar in the Faculty of Law of the University of Manchester, England
(1960-61). |
Rees W. Morrison,
Committee Member
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Rees W.
Morrison is principal of Hildebrandt International (a management
consulting firm specializing in the legal profession). A lawyer,
prolific author -- most recently of Law Department Benchmarks: Myths,
Metrics, and Management (Glasser LegalWorks 2001, 2nd Ed.) -- and
frequent speaker on law department management, Mr. Morrison has
consulted to hundreds of law departments over the past 14 years.
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Mitchell
A. Orpett, Committee Member
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Mitchell
A. Orpett is a founding member of Tribler Orpett & Crone, P.C. in
Chicago, Illinois, a law firm engaged in diverse civil litigation and
in the resolution of insurance and reinsurance disputes. He served as
Chair of the American Bar Association's 27,000 member Tort and
Insurance Practice Section and the ABA's Standing Committee on
Continuing Education of the Bar, which oversees all of the CLE policies
and programming of the entire ABA. He has been involved for more than a
decade with the issues relating to billable hours, attorney
compensation, litigation costs and law firm management. For example,
under his leadership, TIPS has convened the Industry Project, in which
industry trade groups and the defense bars have met under the TIPS
umbrella, to attempt to achieve common ground on issues involving the
tripartite relationship and litigation costs. Mr. Orpett has also
chaired the Illinois State Bar Association's Task Force on Alternative
Billing and Litigation Costs, served as chair of a number of CLE
programs dealing with alternative billing and has written and lectured
extensively on the issue of litigation cost control and billing
practices. |
Michael Roster,
Committee Member
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Michael Roster
is Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Golden West
Financial Corporation, a $60 billion nationwide financial services
holding company. He is also a director and immediate past chair of the
American Corporate Counsel Association, a director of the California
Bankers Association and a former director and vice chair of Silicon
Valley Bank. Previously, Mr. Roster was managing partner of Morrison
& Foerster’s Los Angeles office and, between 1993 and 2000, was
General Counsel of Stanford University and Stanford Medical Center.
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Debra H. Snider
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Debra H. Snider
is an independent consultant, speaker and author. She has published
numerous articles, co-written a book on strategic partnering in the
legal services context, and consulted on projects in the areas of
strategic productivity, law department management, change facilitation,
and operations and process streamlining. She has been a featured
speaker at conferences in London, Amsterdam, Chicago, Los Angeles,
Washington and Toronto, on various topics including leadership,
managing the corporate law department, effective outside counsel
partnering programs, strategic vendor management, and success
strategies for professional and business women. Ms. Snider is a member
of The Chicago Network, the Chicago Bar Association, the Chicago
Council of Lawyers, and the American Bar Association. She currently
serves on the Board of Directors and is Chair of the Membership
Committee of The Chicago Network. She is a 1976 graduate of the
University of Michigan, and a 1979 graduate of the University of
Chicago Law School. |
Ann Yvonne Walker
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Ann Yvonne
Walker is a partner in the law firm of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich &
Rosati in Palo Alto, California. She primarily represents high
technology companies located in the "Silicon Valley" and specializes in
corporate and securities law, including public offerings, mergers and
acquisitions and general corporate representation, with a particular
emphasis on public company disclosure obligations and SEC compliance
issues. She is a frequent speaker at securities law and ethics
programs. Ms. Walker is a member of the Council of the ABA Business Law
Section; ABA Business Law Section's Committee on Professional Conduct,
Ad Hoc Committee on Ethics 2000, and Ad Hoc Committee on
Multidisciplinary Practice and Publications Board, as well as the State
Bar of California, and the American Society of Corporate Secretaries,
San Francisco Chapter. Walker received her B.S. in Mathematics (with
distinction) from Stanford University in 1976 and her J.D. from
Stanford Law School in 1979. |
Anne C. Weisberg
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As a director
in Advisory Services, Ms. Weisberg advises corporations and
professional firms on issues affecting women’s career advancement. Most
recently, Ms. Weisberg directed an advisory services engagement for a
large international law firm, working with the client to design and
implement practical strategies to attract, develop, and advance women. Ms. Weisberg directed Women in Law: Making the Case,
Catalyst’s pioneering study of the career experiences of women in the
legal profession, and has written widely on the subject of women in
law. She also worked on Catalyst’s study, Two Careers; One Marriage,
and is the co-author of Everything a Working Mother Needs to Know
(Doubleday 1994). Ms. Weisberg speaks frequently on various topics
dealing with women’s career advancement. Ms. Weisberg received her
Bachelor of Arts Phi Betta Kappa from University of California
at Berkeley, and her law degree cum laude from Harvard Law
School, where she founded and chaired the Alumnae Committee of the
Harvard Law School Association. She is a member of the Committee on
Women of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and served
as an elected official on the Board of Trustees in the community where
she lives. |
Peter D.
Zeughauser, Committee Member
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Peter D.
Zeughauser is a consultant, meeting facilitator and speaker with The
Zeughauser Group. He is the author of Lawyers are from Mercury, Clients
are from Pluto (ClientFocus Press 1999), a contributing editor of The
American Lawyer, and a columnist for Legal Director Magazine in Europe.
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