MEMPHIS, Tenn., March 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The American Bar Association Center for Professional Responsibility has announced that Lucian T. Pera is the recipient of the 2022 Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award. Mr. Pera, a Partner at Adams and Reese LLP in Memphis, Tennessee, is one of the nation’s leading legal ethics and professional responsibility practitioners.
The Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award is one of the top ethics honors of the ABA and given to an individual whose contributions in the professional responsibility field reflect the highest level of dedication to legal professionalism.
“I’m truly humbled,” Pera said. “It’s simply the highest honor in our field, and I have always looked up to the people who have received the Franck Award.”
“Lucian’s commitment to legal ethics has earned him a well-deserved reputation as a leader in this field of practice and to the profession more broadly,” said Gif Thornton, Managing Partner at Adams and Reese.
For more than 25 years, Pera has represented lawyers, law firms, clients, and those who do business with lawyers and law firms on the widest possible array of issues relating to legal ethics and the regulation of lawyers. He has advanced the profession through his work at the ABA, the national voice of the legal profession and the largest voluntary association of lawyers in the world. For more than a century, the ABA has led the nation on issues related to legal ethics and the regulation of the legal profession.
“Lucian not only has long demonstrated his dedication to the legal profession, the organized bar, and the law regulating lawyers, he has lived his life as a lawyer of the highest caliber,” adds Judy Perry Martinez, who served as ABA’s President from 2019-2020. “He has contributed significantly to innovations in the practice of law pursued by the ABA.”
From 1997 to 2002, Pera served as the youngest member of the ABA Ethics 2000 Commission, which rewrote the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Since then, he has played a central role in national debates over changes to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct as a member of the organization’s policy-making House of Delegates, including Ethics 2000 Commission amendments, amendments to permit screening to avoid disqualification of laterally-moving lawyers, the addition of an ethics rule making harassment or discrimination by lawyers a disciplinary violation, and amendments streamlining the lawyer advertising rules.
“Most importantly, Lucian has helped lawyers across our nation understand what more or differently we must do for those whom we serve, if we are to in any way approach the level of professionalism and ethics that he has embodied throughout his years of practice,” Martinez continues. “Having had the privilege of knowing Michael Franck, it is no surprise that Lucian Pera would be the lawyer leader selected to receive the prestigious award.”
Pera has also chaired the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility governing Coordinating Council and served as the ABA Treasurer.
In addition to his work in the ABA, Pera served as the Tennessee Bar Association’s President and led their Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility from 1995 to 2009. He is a former president of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL), the national organization of ethics lawyers. Pera also chaired and served as a member of the editorial board of the ABA/Bloomberg Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct. He frequently writes and speaks across Tennessee and nationally on legal ethics and professional responsibility.
Mr. Pera will receive the ABA Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award on June 2, 2022, in Baltimore, during the 47th ABA National Conference on Professional Responsibility.
About the American Bar Association
The ABA is the largest voluntary association of lawyers in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.
About Adams and Reese
Adams and Reese (http://www.adamsandreese.com), founded over 70 years ago, is a multidisciplinary law firm with nearly 270 attorneys and advisors strategically located throughout the southern United States and Washington, D.C. The American Lawyer includes Adams and Reese on its distinguished list of the nation’s top law firms, the Am Law 200. The National Law Journal also includes the firm among the top 200 on the NLJ 500 list of the nation’s largest law firms.
A photo of Lucian is available for download on our website or upon request.
