Chicago lawyer Laurel G. Bellows was selected last month to be the association’s president-elect nominee and, if elected at the Annual Meeting in August, she will serve as president-elect for one year before assuming the presidency in August 2012.
Bellows, principal of the Bellows Law Group PC, told the ABA House of Delegates Feb. 4 that her vision for the ABA is for the association to “take the lead in framing the debate on the great issues that affect the rights and liberties of all Americans.”
The legal profession has always been “the bulwark of our democracy,” she said. “We have a unique responsibility to ensure that when it comes to justice, no one is left behind.”
Bellows, a former chair of the ABA House of Delegates, has served as chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and headed the Finance Committee during her tenure on the ABA Board of Governors. She also is a former president of the 22,000 member Chicago Bar Association, where she founded the Women’s Alliance, and was president of the National Conference of Bar Presidents. She has served on the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on the Administration of Justice.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Loyola University School of Law, Bellows was on the Crain’s Chicago Business annual list of Power Players in 2006 and on its list of Chicago’s 100 Women of Influence in 1996.
