Hilarie Bass has always been a top shelf kind of person, excelling with a sui generis brand of curiosity, talent, and creativity with a big dollop of good humor. The Miami-native has shown brightly, even back in high school as a Silver Knight Award winner – in drama – before rising to head one of the largest law firms in the country.
Now Bass, J.D. `81, will lead as the 2017-2018 president of the American Bar Association, the 410,000-member top legal organization with a stated duty to improve the profession. In her acceptance speech at the annual conference in August, Bass urged her fellow members to take up with gusto the ABA’s goals of serving the underserved, taking responsibility for strengthening legal education and more aggressively embracing advances in technology and innovation.
She promised that the ABA would continue to ensure that its “greatest mission -- defending liberty and pursuing justice for all citizens – remains at the forefront of all of our efforts.”