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Bar foundation receives largest bequest ever from Lester E. Zittrain


Zittrain Forums on Law and Public Policy Present:


Hot Topics Facing Voters in the Upcoming 2008 Presidential Election.


The inaugural Zittrain Forums on Law and Public Policy will be held on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 11:30 a.m. in the 17th floor Ballroom of the Omni William Penn Hotel.

The event will feature a lively debate between national political commentators Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg on the Hot Topics Facing Voters in the Upcoming 2008 Presidential Election. The event includes lunch.

Peter Beinart Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of the New Republic and senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.


Jonah GoldbergJonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and author of the #1 bestseller Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Goldberg appears regularly on such television shows as Good Morning America, Crossfire, Nightline, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Real Time with Bill Maher, Larry King Live, Your World with Neil Cavuto, the Glenn Beck Program and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Beinart and Goldberg host a conservative v. liberal webtv show called "What’s Your Problem?".

Established in 2000 by Lester and Ruth Zittrain, the mission of the Zittrain Forums is to bring in relevant, quality speakers for presentations to both attorneys and the public. Lester Zittrain passed away in January 2003, leaving to the foundation a $150,000 bequest to maintain and administer the Zittrain Forums. Mr. Zittrain’s bequest is the largest the foundation has received to date. During his four-decade legal career, Lester Zittrain was attorney to such high-profile celebrities as Pistol Pete Maravich, Mean Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Rocky Bleier, Myron Cope, and many other Steelers from the great 1970s teams. Mr. Zittrain was a Charter and Sustaining Fellow and an elected member of the Board of Trustees of the Allegheny County Bar Foundation, a long-time elected member of the ACBA Board of Governors, a Life Fellow of the Pennsylvania Bar Foundation, and a delegate from Allegheny County to the Pennsylvania Bar Association House of Delegates. He was chair of both the Judiciary Committee and the Civil Litigation Section of the ACBA in the same year.

Ruth Zittrain is a partner at Zittrain and Zittrain and is an active member of Pittsburgh’s legal community. She has served as an elected member of the ACBA Board of Governors and has served on various ACBA Committees. In addition, she is a Charter Fellow of the bar foundation. Ms. Zittrain is an elected member of the Academy of Trial Lawyers of Allegheny County and a court-appointed Master for Arbitration Appeals in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas.

To purchase tickets online, click here or send check made out to ACBF to: Zittrain Forums, ACBF, 400 Koppers Bldg., 436 Seventh Ave., Pittsburgh PA 15219.