Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Irving M. Blank, a Richmond attorney and a member of the executive committee of the Virginia State Bar, became president-elect of the VSB June 19.

Blank, 65, 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 involved personal injury litigation. He represented defendants for 23 years and maintains his membership in the Virginia Association of Defense Attorneys, but he estimated that 85 percent of his practice now is representing plaintiffs in personal injury cases. He is a member of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association.

With that background, he was once among the most vocal and articulate opponents of having insurance companies notify plaintiffs when the companies send a settlement check to p.i. attorneys.

The case of Stephen T. Conrad, the disbarred Prince William County attorney who pocketed more than $4 million in p.i. settlements, has changed his perspective.

He noted that Conrad paid two of his largest settlements to clients because they were in states with payee notification. And he said attorneys who practice in states with payee notification have told him that the procedure is not a problem for them.

The VSB Council had been scheduled to take up the issue this month, but a vote on it has been pushed back to October.

He said he expects to support the proposal with provisions that take into account such circumstances as plaintiffs who do not want correspondence sent to their homes because of concerns about predatory family members or neighbors.

“We need to be cognizant of the responsibility that self-regulation imposes,” he said.

Blank said another major concern is the decline in revenue from interest on lawyers trust accounts (IOLTA) that is a major revenue source for state legal aid agencies.

With the downturn in the economy, lawyers are holding less money in their trust accounts, and interest rates on them have declined as well. “I’m just starting to hear the pain in the voices of the legal aid directors,” he said.

During his term as president-elect, Blank said, “I’ll look to [VSB President Jon Huddleston and Executive Director Karen Gould] for my marching orders, and I’ll do what they tell me to do.”

— Alan Cooper

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