Two Fellows were named as part of the class of honorees for the 2025 American Bar Association Spirit of Excellence award. Col. James M. Durant III, Life Fellow, and Karol Corbin Walker, Life Fellow, will be awarded the Spirit of Excellence Awards at the ABA Midyear Meeting on February 1st, 2025. The award celebrates the efforts and accomplishments of lawyers who work to promote a more racially and ethnically diverse legal profession.
Col. Durant is currently the Chief Counsel for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science-Chicago. He previously served in the Air Force for twenty-six years as an Air Force Judge Advocate in the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He is currently a member of the Fellows Research Advisory Committee, which is a small group of Fellows that advise the Executive Director regarding research of the Foundation and lend their professional expertise to ABF Research Faculty.
Ms. Walker is currently a partner at Kaufman Dolowich, where her practice focuses on business, commercial, and employment litigation matters. In 2023, Ms. Walker became the second African American Chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession, and in 2015 became the first African American president of the Association of the Federal Bar of New Jersey.
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