Illinois Lawyer Wins ABA Professional Liability Writing Award

From left: Stephen P. Younger, chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability; Alexandra Newman, Levit Essay Winner; and Joe McMonigle and Jessica MacGregor, both with the San Francisco law firm of Long & Levit, which helps judge the competition.

Alexandra Newman, a 2010 graduate of Northwestern University School of Law and a staff law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, is the winner of the 2011 Bert W. Levit Essay Contest, sponsored by the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability.  Newman’s essay addressed the legal issue of whether an individual who has engaged in fraud has standing to sue a lawyer, who was engaged in that fraud, for fraud and legal malpractice.

Newman received a cash award from the award’s sponsor, San Francisco law firm Long & Levit, along with an expense-paid trip to the ABA’s Spring Legal Malpractice Conference in Boston.

The Bert W. Levit Essay Contest is named in memory of the founder of the California FAIR Plan and other insurance companies.  Open to members of the ABA Law Student and Young Lawyers Divisions, the contest recognizes outstanding legal essays on a predetermined topic.

The ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability provides statistics and other information on legal malpractice claims, malpractice insurance and malpractice prevention.