Bellows on Track for 2012
March 1, 2010
BY JAMES PODGERS
ABA Journal
It is not much of a secret that Laurel G. Bellows will become ABA president in August 2012.
Bellows, a principal at the Bellows Law Group in Chicago who concentrates much of her business law practice on litigation matters, formally announced her candidacy at the midyear meeting with a speech to the ABA Nominating Committee.
The fact that Bellows, a popular member of the ABA leadership ranks who chaired the House of Delegates from 2006 to 2008, is running unopposed makes her election a virtual certainty, although candidates, following the etiquette of ABA politics, always are reluctant to acknowledge such realities.
But it is a given that the Nominating Committee will formally select Bellows as the ABA president-elect nominee at the 2011 midyear meeting in Atlanta, and that the House will officially make her president-elect in August 2011 at the annual meeting in Toronto. She will automatically become president in August 2012 at the close of the annual meeting in Chicago.
Even at this early stage in her presidential candidacy, Bellows is giving serious thought to how the ABA can help lawyers safely navigate their way through the recession.
“Lawyers don’t have jobs for the first time in my memory,” Bellows told the ABA Journal after her speech to the Nominating Committee. Moreover, she said, “most lawyers don’t have access to what can help them best in a fast-moving technological society.”
That is the gap the ABA must take steps to fill, she said, especially to help practitioners at smaller firms like hers, which has eight attorneys.
“We have a chance to do wonderful things for lawyers, and we’re doing them right now,” Bellows said. “The hands-on help for lawyers is something the ABA is well-placed to provide.”
