RIP Jerold Solovy, a towering figure and reformer among IL's legal lions

[Bozita]

A $1000/hr. lawyer with a huge pro-bono bent.


http://www.suntimes.com/business/3390095-420/solovy-family-illinois-law-case.html

Lawyer Solovy dead at 80
By Maureen O’Donnell [e-mail] Jan 20, 2011 11:57AM


It’s hard to imagine a Chicago lawyer who outranks Jerold S. Solovy in terms of reputation, influence, and largesse.

In his 55-year-long career, the Harvard law graduate evolved into a leonine litigator and confidante of U.S. presidents, yet “Jerry” never lost the common touch he had as a young man at South Shore High School.

He kept the candy jars in his office filled with malted milk balls and chocolate kisses for visitors — and himself. (He didn’t consider most vegetables worth his time.) Friends and relatives say he was as courtly to elevator and newsstand operators as he was to titans of industry.

He could handle any type of case, from Chicago politics, to international business disputes involving billions of dollars. He did pro-bono criminal defense work that resulted in re-sentencings for an estimated 350 people on Death Rows across the nation. He headed a reform commission after the Operation Greylord scandal pulled up a rock and exposed the bribe-fat creepy-crawlies teeming in some Cook County courtrooms.

He saved Illinois a bundle when he succeeded in reducing to $67.5 million the $900 million in fees requested by law firms who represented the state in a landmark 2002 settlement with the tobacco industry. He fought for adoptive parents Kim and Jay Warburton in the “Baby Richard” adoption case. The country was transfixed in 1995 when the Warburtons were ordered to relinquish the sobbing 4-year-old boy, after a ruling that his birth father had not consented to the adoption.

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