Joanne Martin, ABF Life Fellow and recently retired Executive Director of the American Bar Endowment (ABE), has been honored with the 2024 Distinguished Life Fellow Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation (ABF). Martin will be recognized during the 68th Annual Fellows Awards Reception and Banquet, held in Louisville on February 3.
The Distinguished Life Fellow Award is given to a Life Fellow in recognition of a lifetime of sustained and significant professional achievement and public service. During her career, Martin served a vital role at the ABF, the ABE, and the American Bar Association (ABA). Her legal, academic, financial, and management talents have guided all three organizations to continued success and sustained growth.
“For more than 50 years, Joanne Martin has demonstrated the utmost dedication to the American Bar,” said ABF Fellows National Chair Laura V. Farber. “Although we are sad to see Joanne retire, the ABF is so thankful for her contributions to legal research and deeply appreciates Joanne’s decades of steadfast leadership in the organized Bar.”
Martin joined the ABE in 2007 as its Administrative Services Director before she became the ABE’s Executive Director in 2016—only its 4th in the organization’s 80-year history. Prior to her work at ABE, she served as an administrator and researcher with the ABF for 21 years. Her research focused on the delivery of legal services and access to civil justice. Martin is the coauthor of numerous law review articles and two books on these topics with ABF Research Professor Emeritus Stephen Daniels, including, most recently, Tort Reform, Plaintiffs’ Lawyers, and Access to Justice (University Press of Kansas, 2015). She also worked at the ABA for eight years in the publications unit and the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
“I am extremely honored to receive this recognition,” said Martin. “I had the privilege of working with many distinguished scholars and dedicated staff members at the American Bar Foundation for over 24 years. The ABF is a unique and wonderful organization producing groundbreaking research so critical to our understanding of the legal profession and its impact on the world around us. Each and every Fellow of the ABF should be recognized and celebrated for their support of this extraordinary organization. I thank the Fellows officers and the Board of the ABF for the opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of these dedicated lawyers and the faculty and staff of the ABF.”
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About the American Bar Foundation
The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is the world’s leading research institute for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. The ABF seeks to expand knowledge and advance justice through innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law, legal processes, and legal institutions. To further this mission the ABF will produce timely, cutting-edge research of the highest quality to inform and guide the legal profession, the academy, and society in the United States and internationally. The ABF’s primary funding is provided by the American Bar Endowment and the Fellows of The American Bar Foundation.