CHAMPAIGN — In his decades of work as a trial lawyer, Kimball Anderson has seen the need to better educate future lawyers with the skills to be advocates for their clients and the professional responsibility obligations that go with that.
“I have found, in my own practice, that young lawyers know the rules of ethics, but sometimes they don’t see an emerging problem until it is too late,” he said.
Anderson and his wife, Karen Gatsis Anderson — also a lawyer — are taking a substantial step to help better educate the next generation of lawyers by donating $5 million to their alma mater, the University of Illinois College of Law.
It’s the largest non-deferred gift the college has ever received, and it will be used to establish the Kimball R. and Karen Gatsis Anderson Center for Advocacy and Professionalism, the university announced.
Kimball and Karen Anderson went to the UI for both their undergraduate education and law school, receiving their bachelor’s degrees in 1974 and law degrees in 1977.
Kimball Anderson, a nationally recognized trial attorney with Winston & Strawn, Chicago, describes advocacy in law as the skills lawyers need to practice before the courts. That goes beyond an understanding of the applicable rules to the practical skills lawyers need to effectively represent their clients, he said.
Back in his own law school days, trial advocacy wasn’t part of the curriculum, he said, so he learned that on the job.
And while many law schools now include trial advocacy courses, Anderson said a course he and his wife teach for the UI law school in Chicago integrates professional responsibility into advocacy.
It’s his hope, he said, that the UI will expand on that through the establishment of the new center.
The way Kimball Anderson sees it, the UI College of Law could be and should be a national leader in trial advocacy, “and furthermore, if we are going to do this, we should integrate professional responsibility into the program,” he said.
Karen Anderson said the increased emphasis on professionalism is important.
“I think it’s one thing to study the ethical rules that are required of lawyers, but it’s quite another to actually apply them in practice and get to the point where you really recognize an issue right off the bat,” she said.
The Andersons, who have three daughters and two grandsons, first met during new student week during their freshman year at the UI and were married before they started law school, Karen Anderson said.
She grew up in Des Plaines, her father a research chemist and her mom doing bookkeeping and payroll work. They were first-generation Greek Americans, she said, and always emphasized the importance of education.
She began her career in law at Vedder, Price, Kaufman and Kammholz and also was a pro bono cooperating attorney with the ACLU of Illinois. Before she retired from active law practice, she spent nine years as an in-house attorney with the Chicago Board of Education.
Kimball Anderson went to Urbana High School. His family moved to the local community after his father began teaching at the UI School of Social work, he said, and his mother was a nurse at McKinley Health Center.
Kimball Anderson specializes in commercial trial work. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and serves as the director of the Jerome Mirza Trial Academy at the UI College of Law.
He was also the founding president and board member of the former AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, now the Legal Council for Health Justice, and Karen Anderson is a founding board member of the Montessori Network, which operates the Montessori School of Englewood.
The Andersons have been strong supporters of the College of Law, according to the UI.
They have given to the Law Annual Fund each year since they graduated. They provided the naming gift for the College of Law’s courtroom and further funded technology upgrades.
The Andersons have also extended their generosity to help further the practice of public interest law.
For the past 17 years, they have funded public interest fellowships through the Chicago Bar Association, making $50,000 grants (paid over five years) to young lawyers practicing at legal clinics.
They also fund a public interest internship program through the UI College of Law for law students between their second and third years to work at legal clinics. Through that program, a $6,000 stipend is paid for 12-15 internships per summer, Kimball Anderson said.
The future new center’s portfolio of courses “will provide students, alumni and other legal practitioners in Illinois and around the world with the skills required to excel in all manners of legal practice,” according to the UI’s announcement.
The courses will cover such topics as advocacy at the pretrial, trial and appellate levels, alternative dispute resolution, legal ethics and professional responsibility.
“The College of Law has, for many years, focused on developing excellent advocacy skills and instilling high levels of professionalism among our students and graduates,” said Vikram Amar, the college’s dean and Iwan Foundation Professor of Law.
“Thanks to Kimball and Karen’s incredible generosity, the college is poised to build at this crucial intersection of advocacy and ethics to make an even more substantial contribution to the legal profession and to cement and brand the College of Law as a distinctive national leader in these realms,” he said.
The Andersons’ gift also includes money for expanding space both in Champaign-Urbana and Chicago for teaching courtrooms, Kimball Anderson said.
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