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TLIE Director Receives ABA Lifetime Achievement Award

James E. Brill, a veteran solo practitioner from Houston and a Director of TLIE since 1999, was honored at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association held on July 6 in New York. The Donald C. Rikli Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Mr. Brill "in recognition of outstanding service and diligent work during his professional lifetime toward the betterment and standing of sole practitioners throughout the country."

Since his graduation from the University of Texas School of Law in 1957, his career has spanned the decades including service as President of the Houston Junior Bar Association, then Chair of the Board and later President of the State Junior Bar (now Texas Young Lawyers Association), during which time the SJB was recognized by the ABA Young Lawyers Division as the country's outstanding large city young lawyer organization. He is the only person to have held the chairmanship of both the Continuing Legal Education Committee and the Professional Efficiency and Economic Research Committees of the State Bar of Texas.

In the 1970's, he served as Editor and Project Director of the Texas Probate System published by the State Bar of Texas, and of its revised editions. He was elected as a Fellow in the American College of Probate Counsel (now the American College of Trust and Estate counsel) in 1972, and in 1990 as an Academician in the International Academy of Estate and Trust Law.

His membership in the ABA precedes the formation of the Law Practice Management Section in 1974, of which he was elected to serve on the first council and re-elected twice more. In 1983, he served as chair of the Economics of Law Practice Section, and wrote 30 articles on solo practice as a monthly columnist for the ABA Journal beginning in 1991. An active mentor of solo attorneys in the Houston area, he began fostering a group of five women lawyers in 1992, which evolved over the next five years into Solos Supporting Solos, an organization which includes some 200 attorneys who meet monthly and have developed their own website.

Mr. Brill and his wife, formerly Patricia Ann Guinn of Dallas, have two sons, David and Paul, and five grandchildren. Mr. Brill was honored in 1994 with the Gene Cavin Award of the State Bar for Excellence in Continuing Legal Education, and in 1999 by the State Bar College with its Professionalism award. He is a life fellow of both the Texas Bar Foundation and the American Bar Foundation. On receiving the Rikli Award, Mr. Brill remarked, "I like to believe that I have been selected because of my efforts to serve my fellow lawyers . . . I appreciate this award and the personal recognition it bestows on me. I accept it on behalf of the hundreds of lawyers who have worked with me and permitted me to play a small role in improving the lot of my fellow solo and small firm general practitioners."