After almost four decades of leadership in the organized bar and its charitable initiatives, Chicago attorney Leonard F. Amari has widened his horizon of service to include legal education.

A past president of the Illinois State Bar Association, Amari on July 13 was elected president of the John Marshall Law School board of trustees, on which he has served for seven years.

He succeeds his long-time colleague, Alfred E. Gallo, a trustee for 37 years who had been board president since 2000.

Amari praised Gallo's “legacy of outstanding leadership” and pledged “to sustain this momentum as we move the school forward, further cementing our national rankings and reputation.”

Gallo returned the compliment, calling his successor “one of the school's biggest champions, mentoring many students and spurring them on to excellence.”

A 1968 honors graduate of John Marshall, Amari wasted little time in getting involved in bar activities. He was elected to the ISBA Assembly in 1972 and was appointed to the Younger Member Section.

He was the section's delegate to the American Bar Association in 1978, the same year he served as president of the Justinian Society of Lawyers.

Amari was elected to the ISBA Board of Governors in 1980 and, six years later, was elected third vice president without opposition.

A believer in membership diversity, he was the inaugural chair of the ISBA Committee on Minority Participation when it was established in 1987.

His installation as president in 1989 coincided with his appointment of 130 women and minorities to new positions on section councils and committees – 49 percent of the total new appointments.

On Amari's watch, a Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution (now a section council) was created, leading to recognition in 1991 by the American Arbitration Association with presentation of its Whitney North Seymour Medal.

During his tenure as ISBA president, he was honored as Justinian of the Year. He received John Marshall's Distinguished Service Award in 1984.

A Charter Fellow of the Illinois Bar Foundation, Amari served on the board of the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois and was its president from 2002 to 2004. In 2005, he received the Bar Foundation Fellows Award for Distinguished Service to Law and Society.

Fresh out of law school, Amari practiced solo until he former a partnership with Warren Lupel in commercial and personal injury litigation.

General counsel to the Cook County assessor from 1982 to 1987, he became grounded in the real estate taxation and appeals process. That led to formation of his own firm with Joseph F. Locallo Jr.

Now the senior partner in Amari & Locallo, he heads a building full of younger real estate taxation practitioners in a building on North Wells Street that also is downtown headquarters of the Justinian Society.

Through the years, Amari has enabled countless Italian-American lawyers to become active in the ISBA through appointment to section councils and committees and election to leadership positions.

Today, eight Justinians serve on the 25-member Board of Governors, including President Joseph G. Bisceglia. Of the 88 Cook County members of the Assembly, 32 are Justinians.

One of them is his daughter, Katherine A. Amari, a member of the firm. True to form, she is a Silver Fellow of the Illinois Bar Foundation and a vice president of the John Marshall Law Alumni Association.

In addition to Leonard F. Amari, new president of the John Marshall Law School board of trustees, Claireen Herting was elected vice president, Martin Riskin is treasurer, and Dixie Lee Peterson is secretary.

Peterson is past chair of the ISBA Child Law Section Council.

ISBA Assembly member Umberto S. Davi is one of five newly elected board members. Others are State Rep. Jim Durkin, DuPage County State's Attorney Joseph E. Birkett, Nancy Lee Johnson and Mary Ann Hynes.

Johnson, a former member of Congress from Connecticut, is the daughter of Noble W. Lee, dean of the law school from the 1940s until 1974.