When I wanted to share with other lawyers the hurdles and challenges my husband and I faced and the lessons we learned during his Alzheimer’s journey, I submitted a very long article to VOE. Instead of rejecting my opus, Jim suggested we do five webinars with accompanying VOE articles on the subject. I had no idea what a webinar involved or how to submit a webinar for CLE credit. Jim worked with me every step of the way when he had many other commitments. Thanks to Jim’s infinite patience, we, in fact, accomplished my goal. I have never had a better mentor.
Having edited six and written two books on Colorado law for over 30 years, I appreciate Jim’s amazing ability to produce VOE every month for 7 years. He ran the monthly meetings to ensure everyone had a voice, and he ended every meeting with heartfelt thanks to the lawyers and the staff. He was one of the most effective leaders I have ever met.
My first memory of Jim was my first conversation with him.
I submitted an article in response to a blind request on a site for writers seeking quotes at the height of the Pandemic in the Summer of 2021.
After it was published in Experience, Jim contacted me about writing for either (or both) VOE and Experience.
We wound up speaking on an extended call while he was driving to the NJ shore from Philadelphia, where I live, and where he had grown up.
In other words, he went out of his way to welcome me to the publication.
What strikes me in retrospect, moreover, is his focus not only on bringing writers into the fold but also on giving us freedom and flexibility to write about what interests us.
That inclusiveness was only reinforced by the many VOE board meetings I have attended since then. He had a great way of discussing story ideas, developing them into topics of interest to the membership, and building them into issue themes.
In many cases, he immediately recognized a great topic in a suggestion I made with a different focus.
We all should be so lucky to have editors who can help us be a better version of ourselves as writers, as Jim routinely did every month for the entire Editorial Board.
I’ll never forget the first time I met Jim Schwartz. It was during my first week at the ABA while attending a Voice of Experience (VOE) Board meeting. Jim always had an infectious laugh and an engaging smile. He also had a wonderful way of welcoming people and making sure that they felt a part of the “VOE team.” Jim made sure that your thoughts and ideas were heard and never shied away from suggestions for articles—as well as who should be writing the articles. The last time I saw Jim was at the 2024 National Aging and Law Conference in Miami, Florida. With an ever-present grin on his face, you could tell that Jim was having a good time and was happy to be among his colleagues and friends. I will miss Jim’s humor and his love for the Senior Lawyers Division. Perhaps, most of all, I will miss seeing his smile and hearing his laughter. It was certainly a delight to know and work with Jim.
This isn’t a story about Jim, just a few sentences about a good man, a dedicated attorney and a sharp editor of articles about his fellow ABA senior lawyers.
I remember Jim as never having an unkind word for any member of the VOE editorial board. He was always welcoming, even when I had been absent from several meetings and unable to contribute an article due to courtroom demands. If there was a quarrel brewing between board members over an editorial policy, he was quick to quell the uprising. Jim’s focus has always been on unity of purpose and service to our readers.
Jim also had a critical eye for the “hook” in an article, and although we didn’t always see eye to eye (excuse the pun) about the need for me to rewrite one of my (admittedly few) submissions, his suggestions made sense and resulted in an improvement of my writing.
I will miss Jim. I envy his opportunity to now rest from the chores of legal editing. Yet, I am sure Heaven has already engaged his services on multiple celestial legal publications, which I look forward to reading -- should I be so lucky to join Jim – at a future date.
I do hope he is in a place that is warmer than Chicago!
I had the honor and pleasure of working with Jim while serving briefly on the ABA SLD VOE Board. In our monthly meetings, I marveled at Jim's talent for gently cajoling board members (myself included) to submit articles on wide-ranging topics of interest. Most of all, I remember Jim's graciousness and thoughtfulness. He made it a point at the beginning of our November meeting to express gratitude to each member of the Board and staff one by one, calling out their unique contribution. While this made our meetings longer, it also made them feel more inclusive, like the comfort of a group hug. You will be dearly missed, Jim. May you rest in peace knowing that you united our disparate views into the singular Voice of Experience.
In a word, Jim was tireless.
He was tireless in helping clients. We talked several times about a client he was trying to help. The law did little to protect his client, but he never gave up on trying to find a way to better protect his client from evil.
He was tireless in his commitment to the ABA. Voice of Experience is what it is today because Jim was bold in asking authors to contribute or if they knew someone who could. He was hard to turn down, and sometimes, when I did, he would come back later and ask again.
He was tireless in his personal life. I spoke with him after he had been seriously ill for several weeks. He rebuffed my suggestion that maybe it was time to cut back or even retire. There was family to be loved and work to be done; he was not finished, and he was not stopping.
It was while the world was beginning to emerge from COVID. Some of us were starting to venture out. Others were still staying home, having groceries delivered by Whole Foods, and ordering toilet paper from Amazon. My wife and I were picking up most of our food at a local Italian market, where we would call, tell them what we wanted, drive over, and remain isolated in our car while they brought our order out and put it in the trunk. We were debating when and to what extent we should reenter the world. And then, along came Jim Schwartz.
I have recently been elected to the ABA Senior Lawyers Division Council. I reached out to the SLD leaders by phone to get to know them and to learn more about the division. All were receptive and helpful. But the conversation with Jim was exceptionally enthusiastic, detailed, personalized, and long. We learned a lot about each other. One of the things I learned was that Jim was going to be traveling from his home In Chicago to South Florida, where I live, a few weeks later. He suggested lunch.
I paused. Was I ready to leave my cocoon? I had to do it sometime. We made plans. The day came. With more than a bit of trepidation, I walked into a public facility, an outdoor restaurant on the beach, where I met Jim. We both wore masks, at least until the food came, and we had to find a way to put it in our mouths. We ate. And we talked. For a long time.
We sat at our table for about four hours. Jim detailed his vision for SLD. I asked questions and offered input. But we didn’t limit ourselves to SLD matters. We talked about our lives, our histories, our futures. We talked of many things: of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—of cabbages—and kings. We told stories. We laughed.
I was to learn that such conversations were the norm for Jim, not just with me, but with virtually everyone. Over the years, we had many additional far-reaching talks—some on the phone and some in person, some serious and some light-hearted—as did, I am sure, many of those reading these words.
Jim’s legacy to the SLD is his role in establishing its structure. His legacy to the people who make up the SLD, however, is much more personal. He gave of himself in his friendships in a way that made us want to give back. We are better for having known Jim, and the void he leaves is not just within SLD, but within ourselves.
I met Jim Schwartz by telephone around the end of 2017 or the beginning of 2018. I had recently retired after half a century of law practice and was looking for writing opportunities that would fill my weekday mornings in the office. (My old firm provides retired partners with offices if they use them.)
Jim agreed to add me to the Voice of Experience editorial advisory board. Soon after, he invited me to write a monthly column—one that would attempt light-heartedness, even humor. I have written an Adventures in the Law column every month since.
My experience with the Voice of Experience later led to membership on the Experience Magazine board and to writing articles and a column, Curmudgeon’s Corner, for that publication.
Jim was gracious in his comments about columns—most of the time. But on rare occasions, he would call to challenge a point or two in a proposed column. In fact, he spiked a couple of columns, causing me to hastily come up with substitutes. But he invariably expressed his concerns in a reasonable, sympathetic, even apologetic manner. Typically, I hung up feeling guilty that I had troubled him.
My work with the two publications has brought me a great deal of satisfaction. It fills many weekday mornings with precisely the kind of activity I was seeking when I first spoke with Jim all those years ago.
I am grateful to have known Jim and for the contribution he has made to my retirement years. I miss him.
I met James Schwartz in 2021 when searching for a newsletter to publish an article about law office management. Jim kindly accepted my article and invited me to join his editorial board for the Voice of Experience newsletter. Jim was the consummate editor, providing writers with ideas and inspiration. He “died with his boots on,” serving clients and the ABA until his passing at 75. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him. Thanks for the memories and rest in peace knowing that you served your profession well.
The Sheraton Hotel Riverwalk lobby during TECHSHOW—that’s where I first met Jim Schwartz some twenty-five years ago.
For Jim, being perpetually late was a science and an art. It wasn’t a matter of being inconsiderate, it was just a matter of having no sense of time. And it didn’t matter whether he was meeting friends for dinner or catching a plane.
More than a few times, Jim didn’t show up for a dinner with ABA friends until we’d given up and finished eating, only to arrive just in time to profusely apologize and pick up the tab.
Jim would get on a plane and go anywhere on a minute’s notice, more frequently than many go to the grocery store.
Back in early 2006, Jim and a friend were flying to Morelia to spend a long weekend at my house. The friend showed up on time for the flight, but Jim didn’t make the flight. And so I had to meet his friend, whom I’d met only once at a large gathering the summer before, at my hometown airport and then return the following morning to pick up Jim.
Jim was the exemplary houseguest, always saying the right things and never missing an opportunity to tell others years later how I made him pick blackberries for his breakfast. We would sit at the Hotel Casino café on a Saturday night under the portales in Morelia’s Centro Historico, listening to the tunas, and he and David would pick out which of the men in tights they thought the most handsome, telling me that the hirsute, short singer was all mine. That would become a meme, and for years to come, whenever Jim would see some guy looking like Danny DeVito, he’d tell me that he’d found the man of my dreams.
He would remember bringing the Ricardo Calderon pottery dishes from Patamban he bought for his daughter and the loopy wool sweater for his granddaughter in Patzcuaro, but he would forget his passport, not noticing that he’d left it in a taxi until the cab driver returned it to my house, too late to return it to him before his flight. But somehow, he facilely talked his way through immigration once back in Chicago. Only Jim could manage that.
Wherever he went, he never met a stranger. Jim made the lives of all he came into contact with richer for the experience. You’re remembered, Jim, and you’re missed.
I met Jim during the ABA 2018 Midyear Meeting in Vancouver – my first in-person meeting as the new Director of the Senior Lawyers Division. He was newer to the Division but convinced the then Division Chair to appoint him to be Chair of the then-dwindling Voice of Experience newsletter, publishing maybe 4 articles per month at the time. He and Jeff Allen proposed a new structure of monthly columns instead of themes to keep the articles diverse in every issue and recruited new authors. The issues grew to an average of 12 articles per month over the years, and the board (which also meets monthly) also tripled in size. I attribute this to Jim’s ability to make every author and board member feel valuable and heard. Our article bank is at least 3 months ahead. He was dedicated and invested in every issue, reviewing each article before it was published and offering any edits or comments. He was Chair of the VOE Board until the day he died in late December of 2024. He took the same zest for recruiting authors as he did in recruiting members to join SLD committees and leadership in the Division and became our Division Chair for the 2022-23 Bar Year. This meant I had weekly one-on-one work calls with him, which inevitably led to us touching base about our personal lives as well. In true Jim fashion, he restructured the committees, organizing them by groups, and appointed Group Directors with two-year terms. He created a new partnership between the SLD and the Alzheimer’s Association that is still ongoing. He pushed for an in-person fall meeting, which we’d never had before, and we didn’t have a budget for it since we were “Getting Back Together” post-COVID. As he would say, we need to “return to fun.” As others have noted, no meeting started and ended on time, but Jim loved people, writing, traveling, the ABA, his family, his boyfriend, his dog, his work representing his clients, and most of all, fun. He was planning on seeing ABBA in London this spring in April. I hope he is singing with them in heaven. I will miss his positivity and passion, and I will always be grateful for his legacy and friendship.
Jim had a knack for being late to everything, so I can’t quite understand why he couldn’t have been late for this, too. He was always up for an adventure, always ready to try something new. Whenever I was working nearby, I’d visit him in Chicago. When we got together for meetings, we made great memories, from Whistler to the New Orleans Jazz Fest, where we caught an unforgettable performance by Sting.
Jim was there for so many moments in my life, including the first time I took my son to an ABA meeting in Minnesota on my own. “Uncle Jim” was Cyrus’ favorite, and his presence was woven into so many of my ABA experiences that it’s hard to accept we won’t be making more.
I miss my friend deeply, but I take comfort in the thought that one day, our paths will cross again.
