Team

Jim is a 1970 graduate of the College of Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Upon graduating in 1975 from John Marshall Law School in Chicago he began practice with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office under Bill Scott prosecuting environmental cases in the Chicago-land area. In 1977 he became an Assistant State’s Attorney for Champaign County, Illinois, prosecuting major felony cases. He opened his own office and entered private practice in 1979 with offices in Urbana, Illinois. He became involved over 25 years ago with the Illinois Public Pension Fund Association (IPPFA) at its inception because of the seminal Illinois case of Urbana Police Pension Fund v. Illinois Dept. of Human Rights he was litigating on behalf of the Urbana Police Pension Fund concerning the authority of the Board to determine who could be admitted to the fund. Since then he has represented approximately 50 different public pension boards, both fire and police, in various matters. He lectures and presents throughout the State of Illinois at the many IPPFA seminars, Certified Trustee Training sessions, web-based Trustee Training educational seminars, and their Annual Training Conference. He consults with various police and firefighter pension boards as Deputy General Counsel to IPPFA on a variety of public pension issues. His legal practice is focused primarily on Illinois police and firefighter public pensions as well as DUI defense and license reinstatement.He and his wife Katie have adult twin sons and reside in Champaign, Illinois.