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Blank seeks VSB post

Irving M. Blank, a Richmond attorney and a member of the executive committee of the Virginia State Bar, has circulated a petition to be named president-elect of the VSB.

VSB bylaws require candidates for the position to submit a petition with the names of 50 attorneys by Oct. 1. The bylaws also require the candidate to have been an active VSB member for seven years and to have served at least two years on bar council within the five years before election.

If only one candidate files, he or she becomes president-elect when the current president-elect becomes president the following June. If more than one candidate files, a ballot is mailed to VSB members by Nov. 5.

Blank, 64, is a partner in the three-attorney firm of ParisBlank LLP. He was elected to bar council in 2003 and appointed to the executive committee three years later.

He grew up in Danville and attended Virginia Tech on a tennis scholarship before graduating from the University of Richmond law school in 1967.

Most of his legal career has been devoted to personal injury litigation. He represented defendants for 23 years and maintains his membership in the Virginia Association of Defense Attorneys, but he estimates that 85 percent of his practice now is representing plaintiffs in personal injury cases. He is a member of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association.

He also is a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Judicature Society. Blank is a longtime member of the board of directors of Central Virginia Legal Aid Inc. and has been very active in such Jewish organizations as the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council and the Virginia Israel Advisory Board.

Blank also is a strong supporter of the Virginia Holocaust Museum and was instrumental in the partnership between the museum and the Virginia Law Foundation. The VLF agreed last year to be a major benefactor of the museum and its Nuremberg Trials Courtroom Exhibit and to participate in programming for the exhibit.

He gives Jon D. Huddleston, the current VSB president-elect and a VLF board member, much of the credit for the joint work of the groups. “It’s been a wonderful partnership from both organizations’ perspective,” he said.

Blank said he decided to seek the VSB presidency because “I’ve really enjoyed serving on the council and on the executive committee.” He said his wife, Rhona, and law partners Leonard A. Paris and Keith B. Marcus had a veto on the decision but encouraged him to seek the position.

He said he shares the concerns of the current VSB president, Manuel A. Capsalis, about protection of the public and the lack of diversity in the leadership of the VSB and other bar groups. “We definitely ought to be doing something about client protection,” he said, although he has doubts about two suggestions in that regard, mandatory legal malpractice insurance and notification of clients by insurance companies that they have mailed settlement checks to the clients’ attorneys.

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