This past weekend at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting Fenwick & West partner Laurence Pulgram became the new head of the organization’s largest section—litigation. Pulgram replaces Steven Weiss of Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn as leader of the 50,000-member group. A seasoned litigator, Pulgram is chair of Fenwick’s commercial litigation practice and co-chair of its copyright litigation practice. He spoke to 
The Recorder about taking on leadership of ABA’s litigation section and 
what he’s got planned for the next 12 months.

How did you become head of the litigation section? What’s involved in getting the nod? I started working on national meetings for the section 20 years ago and I fell in love with the mission and the people—the mission being to make better lawyers, make a better profession, make a better justice system, and the people, who are many of the top litigators in the country. I enjoyed it enough that I stuck with it and eventually came to the point where being chair made sense to them and made sense to me.

Was there an election? There is a selection process in which people put their hats in the ring. There’s a process to nominate a slate of officers and the officers are then voted on by the section at large.