Jim is a 1970 graduate of the College of Engineering, UIUC. Upon graduating in 1975 from John Marshall Law School in Chicago he began practice with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office under Bill Scott prosecuting environmental cases in the Chicagoland area. In 1977 he became an Assistant State’ Attorney for Champaign County, Illinois, prosecuting major felony cases until he opened his own office and entered private practice in 1979 with offices in Urbana. He became involved with IPPFA at one of its earliest meetings because of the seminal case of Urbana Police Pension Fund v. Illinois Dept. of Human Rights he was litigating on behalf of the Urbana pension fund concerning the authority of the Board to determine who could be admitted to the fund. Since then he has represented approximately 50 different boards, both fire and police, in various matters. He lectures around the State at the many IPPFA seminars and the Annual Conference and consults with various boards as Deputy General Counsel on a variety of pension issues.