It is an honor and a privilege to serve as the President of the American Board of Professional Liability Attorneys (ABPLA), an organization that embraces and promotes the highest standards in the legal profession. Throughout my career I have served on several boards and received a number of accolades but the rest pale in comparison to the pride I feel in serving the public through the ABPLA.

Our organization was founded in 1972, in the wake of US Supreme Court Justice Warren Berger's observation that our country suffered from a "low state of American trial advocacy and a consequent diminution in the quality of our entire system of justice". Chief Justice Berger believed that a system of certification of trial advocates in specialties was "imperative and long overdue". The ABPLA met this challenge and continues to serve our country through its certification of legal specialties in two of the most complex areas of legal practice: medical and legal malpractice.

Since the ABPLA was first organized in 1972, professional negligence law has become increasingly complex, requiring lawyers to become specialists in the nuances of legal or medical negligence in order to serve their clients competently and effectively. In such an environment, the need is ever greater to provide consumers with an objective standard by which to assess professional negligence attorneys. Board certification provides such a benchmark.

It is the ABPLA's continuing mission to certify attorneys according to the highest standards of experience, ethics, education, examination and excellence. Through this rigorous process, ABPLA offers consumers a clear standard of excellence for selecting medical and legal malpractice attorneys in whom they can have confidence. For attorneys specializing in professional negligence liability, ABPLA serves as a unifying national voice, which raises our visibility as leaders in the marketplace we serve.

It is our goal to identify and certify exceptional professional attorneys in every state, and to make available to prospective clients the names of those board-certified attorneys.

As President, my continued goal is to increase public awareness and appreciation for selecting a board-certified attorney, as they would a board-certified physician.

William F. McMurry
President, American Board of
Professional Liability Attorneys