The American Bar Association’s highest honor will be awarded to Lawrence J. Fox, a longtime champion of legal ethics, professional responsibility and pro bono work who also has given decades of other service to the association and the legal profession.
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Ethics, pro bono leader Lawrence Fox to receive ABA Medal
June 21, 2021
Fox will receive the ABA Medal during the first day of the House of Delegates meeting on Monday, Aug. 9, which will be virtual and in-person at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. The two-day policy-making session concludes the 2021 ABA Annual Meeting on Aug. 10.
The ABA Medal recognizes exceptionally distinguished service by a lawyer or lawyers to American jurisprudence and is given only in years when the ABA Board of Governors determines a nominee has provided extraordinary service to the legal profession.
“Larry Fox has distinguished himself as one of the giants of the legal profession,” ABA President Patricia Lee Refo said. “In addition to his decades of service to the American Bar Association, Larry has been a leading voice on legal ethics and professional responsibility, has taught and mentored countless law students, and consistently done impactful pro bono work, particularly in the area of death-penalty representation. In more than a half century of legal work, Larry has exemplified the highest standards and ideals of the legal profession.”
Fox has taught or lectured on professional responsibility for three decades, including a decade at Yale Law School, where he founded the Ethics Bureau, a student clinic focused on capital cases. He has also written or co-written eight books on lawyer professional responsibility. A longtime veteran of securities regulation and litigation matters, Fox received both his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
His record of ABA service includes longtime membership in the House of Delegates and work to launch the forerunner of ABA Day in Washington, D.C., the association’s annual grassroots lobbying event on Capitol Hill. He also has held leadership posts on the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, the Commission on the Evaluation of the Rules of Professional Conduct, the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project and the Section of Litigation.
“My work with the ABA has been a pleasure at every level; it’s never been a job,” Fox said. “I greatly appreciate the totally unexpected honor of the ABA Medal, and it’s even nicer when you get recognized for just having fun.”