Click here for PDF of fiscal report
“The ABA's finances are sound,” wrote Adams and Reese Partner and American Bar Association Treasurer Lucian Pera in his final fiscal report as his three-year term as the organization’s treasurer has come to an end. Pera’s article was published on the ABA Journal Law News Now web site on June 1, 2014.
“Our Association's finances look better than they have during my term, and better than they have in a number of years,” Pera continued. “We continue to have financial issues we need to address, but there's a leadership consensus identifying the issues; we have a specific, agreed plan to address them; and our staff and volunteer leaders are steadily working that plan.”
Pera added: “Serving you as Treasurer has been an honor, a privilege, immensely challenging, and great fun. Between these three years and one prior stint on the Board, I have learned a great deal about the ABA — good, bad, and otherwise. Given all that I have learned, I am fundamentally more optimistic than ever about the ABA's future. Our Association's prospects have never been better.”
Pera took the office as ABA Treasurer in August 2011. Recently, Pera was appointed to the ABA Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education, which will study the economic and political issues surrounding the increasing costs of law school and the shrinking number of employment opportunities for recent law school graduates.
With nearly 400,000 members, the ABA is the national voice of the legal profession, working to improve the administration of justice, promoting programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accrediting law schools, providing continuing legal education, and working to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.
Pera has a long record of service to the profession having served on the ABA Board of Governors, in the ABA House of Delegates, and as a member of the Ethics 2000 Commission that revised the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which are now the model for the lawyer ethics rules in virtually every American jurisdiction. Pera also formerly chaired the ABA Board of Governors Finance Committee and the ABA Standing Committee on Technology and Information Systems, and has been a member of the ABA House of Delegates, primarily representing the Tennessee Bar Association, for all but three years since 1991.
At Adams and Reese, Pera is a Partner in the firm’s Memphis office and focuses his practice on commercial litigation, legal ethics work and media law. Pera’s extensive bar association work in the law of legal ethics and professional responsibility has resulted in successful local, Tennessee and national practice and leadership in this emerging field. He represents and advises attorneys, law firms, their clients and businesses who deal with lawyers about all aspects of the law.