IIT Chicago-Kent to host "An Evening Celebrating 50 Years"

Members of the larger legal community will join IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law faculty, students and alumni as they celebrate the 50-year teaching career of Ralph L. Brill at the law school and his lasting contributions to the legal academy and the profession. "An Evening Celebrating 50 Years: Professor Ralph Brill's Legacy at Chicago-Kent" will be held July 21 at the Chicago Cultural Center's Preston Bradley Hall at 78 East Washington Street (between Wabash Street and Michigan Avenue) in Chicago. A reception will begin at 5:30 p.m. and the program will start at 7 p.m.

"There are few schools that can boast a faculty member who has so effectively spanned the generations as has Ralph Brill," said Dean Harold J. Krent. "Professor Brill has helped legions of Chicago-Kent students and revolutionized the legal writing community nationally."

The son of Romanian immigrants, Ralph L. Brill was born in Chicago. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Illinois, where he served as associate editor of the University of Illinois Law Forum. In 1961, after a one-year teaching stint at the University of Michigan Law School, Professor Brill joined the Chicago-Kent faculty.

At Chicago-Kent, Professor Brill established the law school's comprehensive legal research and writing program and served as its director for 14 years. He also founded Chicago-Kent's award-winning moot court program. From 1970 to 1973, he served as associate dean of the law school, and as acting dean from 1973 to 1974. In addition to teaching legal research and writing, Professor Brill has taught courses in torts, products liability, constitutional law, agency and partnership, commercial law statutes, damages, social legislation, property, and advanced torts to more than 8,500 students. He currently maintains a full-time schedule, teaching torts to first-year students and a seminar on famous trials in history.

"I've taught about a dozen courses in my 50 years of teaching," explained Professor Brill. "None was as important as Legal Writing. There, students honed the basic professional skills of legal analysis, legal reasoning, legal research, and oral and written communication, skills essential for all kinds of law practice."

Professor Brill is a past chair of the Association of American Law Schools' Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning and Research; a former director of the Legal Writing Institute; and a former director of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Professor Brill is a co-author of A Sourcebook on Legal Writing Programs, published by the American Bar Association, and has served as an appellate consultant in many important cases, primarily in the area of torts. Each year, Chicago-Kent's Ilana Diamond Rovner Appellate Advocacy Competition presents the Ralph L. Brill Award for the best brief.

Professor Brill continues to work tirelessly to elevate the status of legal writing educators and programs. His commitment and service to the fields of legal writing and legal education have earned him an American Association of Law Schools Legal Writing, Research, and Reasoning Section award; the Thomas L. Blackwell Memorial Award; the Courage Award; and the Burton Foundation's "Legends of the Law" Award, among others. Earlier this year, the Association of Legal Writing Directors established the Ralph L. Brill Award to honor those in the legal academy who, for 50 years or more, have assisted their colleagues and students in mastering legal analysis, research and writing. Professor Brill was selected as the award's first recipient.

In addition to his groundbreaking work in the area of legal writing and research, Professor Brill has been at the forefront of changes in legal education at the local, state and national levels for law students and practitioners. He was instrumental in establishing ABA accreditation standards related to distance education in law schools. Professor Brill was the chief draftsperson of the rules adopted by the Illinois Supreme Court requiring continuing legal education for lawyers.

In the spring of 2006, to honor what Chicago-Kent Dean Harold J. Krent called Professor Brill's "extraordinary commitment to legal education and to generations of Chicago-Kent students," the law school announced plans to name its first faculty-endowed chair after him. In the first public phase of fund raising, more than 400 Chicago-Kent alumni and friends contributed $1.5 million to complete the campaign to fund the chair.

Professor Adrian James Walters of England's Nottingham Law School has been named the first Ralph Brill Faculty Chair. Professor Walters' scholarly and teaching interests lie in the fields of corporate and insolvency law. In 2007, he founded the Nottingham Trent University Insolvency and Corporate Law Research Group, which focuses on corporate liquidation, corporate rescue, personal insolvency, cross-border insolvency, and comparative insolvency law systems in emerging markets. Professor Walters will assume the Brill Chair in the fall of 2011.

The Chicago-Kent Alumni Association is collecting memories of Professor Brill from alumni, faculty, and colleagues at ralphbrill.wordpress.com. The association invites comments on the site with favorite stories or anecdotes about Professor Brill. Fond memories or well wishes are appreciated as Professor Brill and Chicago-Kent celebrate this significant milestone. Comments and photos can also be emailed to alums@kentlaw.edu.

Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. Chicago-Kent was the first law school in the nation to require its students to take five semesters of legal writing courses before they graduate. The law school's emphasis on effective analytical, research, and communications skills has served as a model for other institutions.