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| Holly Fujie, Bet Tzedek Board Member, ELECTED 84TH STATE BAR PRESIDENT |
Holly Fujie elected 84th State Bar President Fujie, 52, will be sworn in as the 84th president of the 217,000-member organization at the State Bar’s annual meeting in Monterey in September. She was elected by her colleagues on the Board of Governors on the first ballot. Fujie defeated two other women: Danni Murphy, 60, an assistant public defender and supervisor of two Orange County branch offices in Laguna Niguel and Newport Beach, and Carmen Ramirez, 59, community planning director for CAUSE, a Ventura advocacy agency for economic and environmental justice. Fujie will follow Margaret Morrow, now a federal judge in Los Angeles, elected in 1993, and Karen Nobumoto, a Los Angeles deputy district attorney, elected in 2001, as the three women to serve as State Bar president. A graduate of UC-Berkeley and Boalt Hall School of Law, Fujie represents financial institutions, insurance brokers and other major businesses and specializes in fraud-related matters at Buchalter Nemer. She is active in promoting diversity in schools and businesses through a number of organizations and received the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles Distinguished Service Award in 2003. Fujie serves on that association’s board, as well as on the boards of the California Bar Foundation and Bet Tzedek. She also served as deputy general counsel to the Los Angeles Police Department Rampart Independent Review Panel. She is married to Lee Cotugno, a Beverly Hills attorney, and has two children, Sabrina, 17, and Thomas, 11. She will succeed Jeff Bleich of San Francisco when she is sworn in on Sept. 27. Founded in 1927 by the State Legislature, the State Bar of California is an administrative arm of the California Supreme Court, serving the public and seeking to improve the justice system for more than 80 years. All lawyers practicing law in California must be members of the State Bar. By July 2008, membership reached more than 217,000. ### MEDIA CONTACT: Kathleen Beitiks 415-538-2440 kathleen.beitiks@calbar.ca.gov This press release was obtained from The State Bar of California Website |
San Francisco, July 11, 2008 — Holly Fujie, a shareholder with Buchalter, Nemer, Fields and Younger in Los Angeles, was elected president today of The State Bar of California, only the third woman chosen to head the organization since it was established by the legislature in 1927. |
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Bet Tzedek is an affiliated agency of the United Way and The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.
Bet Tzedek gratefully acknowledges the support of The Archstone Foundation.
Legal services for Nazi victims have been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.