Lawrence Joseph Fox

Lawrence J. Fox, a longtime champion of legal ethics, professional responsibility and pro bono work who also has given decades of other service to the association and the legal profession, passed away on February 20th, 2026. He was 82. A Celebration of Life service will be held on Saturday, April 25 in Philadelphia at 11:00 a.m. at the Union League Club.

A longtime veteran of securities regulation and litigation matters, Fox was a partner at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for forty years before joining Schoeman Updike Kaufman & Gerber LLP in New York. He is also a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Bar Foundation, and he served on multiple corporate boards, including Dynasil and Aberdeen Investments. Fox's record of service to the American Bar Association included longtime membership in the House of Delegates, and in 2021, he was awarded the American Bar Association's prestigious ABA Medal. He also has held top leadership posts of the ABA's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, the Commission on the Evaluation of the Rules of Professional Conduct, and the Section of Litigation. He also created and led the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project. Recognized nationally as one of the most active participants in advising ABA members on judicial conduct, Fox taught legal ethics and professional responsibility for three decades, lectured at more than 35 law schools on the same topic, and wrote or co-wrote eight books on professional responsibility with Professor Susan Martyn, including The Law Governing Lawyers: Model Rules, Standards, Statutes, and State Lawyer Rules of Professional Conduct.

Most recently, he was the Crawford Lecturer Senior Research Scholar in Law at the Yale Law School in New Haven, CT. At Yale, he founded the Ethics Bureau at Yale (EBay) where worked with students to advise lawyers on how to proceed when faced with violations of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which he helped author. He was a graduate of Cheltenham High School in Cheltenham, PA, and received both his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his professional accomplishments and accolades, Larry was a beloved friend and mentor.

An avid world traveler, he unexpectedly ran into people he knew in foreign countries so often that an unofficial award was named for him: the Larry Fox Award, given to anyone who unexpectedly runs into someone they know in a foreign country. Larry was also an antique car enthusiast, a hobby he inherited from his father, Bill Fox; a model train maven whose childhood O-gauge Lionel train set still runs; a sailor; a connoisseur of great food and drink, classical music, theater, and art; and most of all, a devoted denizen of the beach in Margate, NJ, where he spent every summer body surfing and looking out at the ocean with arms outstretched, asking no one in particular, "I wonder what the rich people are doing today?"

He is survived by his wife, Paulette Inabinet Fox; his sister Caren Fires (Paul Fires); daughter Emily (Peter Scott); son Anthony (Carrie Appleton); and four grandchildren. He was pre-deceased by his brother, Jon D. Fox of Abington, PA, and his parents Elainne (Brickman) and William Fox.