Chicago attorney Karen Litscher Johnson of Evanston began her tenure April 19 as the first director of the Illinois Supreme Court's Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) board.

Until late last year, Johnson was lead administrator of training and development of attorneys in firm-wide offices of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. More recently, she was a director at Mestel and Co., a national legal recruiting firm.

During her six years with DLA Piper, Johnson developed an education department, planned hundreds of programs, created curriculums for practice areas, and provided oversight for the associate review process.

A graduate of the Cornell University Law School and member of Phi Beta Kappa, she was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1988 and began the first decade of her legal career at Much, Shelist, Freed, Denenberg, Ament & Rubenstein, Chicago.

A member of the Chicago Bar Association Young Lawyers Section Council for eight years, and its chair in 1998-99, Johnson organized the Pro Bono and Government Service Career Fairs, and was co-editor of the Chicago Lawyers Court Handbook.

A member of the joint ISBA-CBA Committee on MCLE in 1997-98, she served on the boards of the CBA, the Chicago Bar Foundation and the Center for Conflict Resolution.

“She brings a level of expertise, energy and enthusiasm which all of the board members recognize as important to our mission,” said vice chair Patrick M. Kinnally of Aurora, who headed the search committee.

Kinnally, who serves on the ISBA Committee on Supreme Court Rules and three section councils, noted that Johnson has “undertaken large-scale organizational planning with all the attendant challenges (and) worked with MCLE issues in various states.”