William J. Pierce

Betty and Bill Pierce sit next to my wife, Lynne, and me at Michigan football games. But you know what? As often as not, neither Betty nor Bill is there. They are in Denver, or Atlanta, or Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Washington, or Boston, or Los Angeles, or some other city where one or more drafting committees of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (the Conference) are meeting.

Betty and Bill have been doing this at least since 1969, when Bill became the executive director of the Conference. Before taking that position, he had served as the president of the Conference, and before that, as a commissioner from Michigan. The Conference, as most lawyers know, is one of the two premier national organizations promoting law reform mainly in the'sphere of private law, the other organization being the American Law Institute (ALI). Celebrating its 100th year, the Conference is the older of the two organizations, its founding having antedated the founding of the ALI by about three decades.