My Chicago Law Moment: Jim Franczek, '71, Met People Who Would Become Key Figures in his Life

Jim Franczek

The way James C. Franczek, Jr., ’71, tells it, his Chicago Law Moment started about 45 years ago and has been unfurling ever since.

That’s how long it’s been since he graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, a place that once felt like an improbable leap for a kid from Harvey, Illinois, whose parents had never gone to college. It’s a place that fostered his first brush with Illinois and Chicago government, enabling him to meet people like Richard M. Daley, Harold Washington, and Michael Madigan, who would become familiar figures as he grew a successful practice handling high-profile contract negotiations and complex labor and employment litigation for the City of Chicago and numerous other public and private entities.

It’s also the place he met his wife, Deborah Chase Franczek, ’72.

“Life is serendipitous,” said Franczek, a founder of Chicago-based labor and employment law firm Franczek Radelet and the chief labor counsel for the Chicago Public Schools, the City of Chicago, the Chicago Park District, and the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority. “It gives you opportunities, it gives you experiences. This law school gave me those opportunities and gave me those experiences. … When you look at the interweaving of those things, [you see that they] ended up resonating and affecting me for my whole career.”

Franczek’s dad, a Polish immigrant who had served in the US Army during World War II, had insisted that his son visit the University of Chicago Law School during his junior year at Notre Dame.

“It wasn’t, ‘Apply here, maybe you’ll get in,’” Franczek said. “It was, ‘Here is where you’re going.’”

And so he did. During his second year, in 1969, Franczek won a Ford Fellowship to clerk in the Illinois General Assembly.

“The Speaker of the House at that time was a guy named John Touhy—he was a very gruff, very old-school Democrat,” Franczek said. “So [on my first day,] I report to John Touhy, and I said, ‘Speaker Touhy, I’m here from the University of Chicago … where do I go, what do I do?’ And he took one look at me and he said, ‘University of Chicago?’ And he sent me over—and I’ll never forget, he pointed—to all the mavericks. And the mavericks at that time were Harold Washington, Adlai Stevenson III, a guy named Tony Scariano, Paul Simon. I ended up being a gopher for all of those people. That ended up affecting, impacting, resonating for literally decades in my life.” [In 1969, Washington and Scariano were members of the Illinois House of Representatives, Simon had recently become the state’s lieutenant governor, and Stevenson was the state treasurer.]

The next year, Franczek was a law clerk for the Bill of Rights Committee for the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1970—incidentally, the Committee’s legal counsel was Dallin H. Oaks, ’57, a former Law School professor and Utah Supreme Court justice who is now a top leader in the Mormon Church—and met Michael Madigan, who would later become the longtime speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and Richard M. Daley, who would become the longtime mayor of Chicago.

As Franczek’s career unfolded, he began to see how valuable those early encounters had been. Scariano, a state lawmaker and attorney, hired Franczek to work in his firm and help on some of his campaigns. Franczek represented the City of Chicago in labor negotiations and disputes when both Washington and Daley were mayor, and he continues to do so under Mayor Rahm Emanuel. And Stevenson—although not intentionally—provided the venue for Franczek’s first date with Deborah: the future husband and wife attended a fundraising picnic together on Stevenson’s farm.

“At the time, I didn’t quite appreciate it,” Franczek said of his clerkships. “It was an exciting experience, it was a wonderful experience. But little did I know that I would be looking back now having represented the City of Chicago, the Chicago Public Schools, [having] done a lot of relatively big things in labor.”

It’s the Law School, he said, that made those opportunities possible.

“As you look back on the course of 45 years, first of all, you appreciate how quickly that time goes by. Secondly, you end up appreciating much more than you did when you were here,” he said. “The Law School is not only important to me professionally, but it was also important to me personally. It was incredible.”

My Chicago Law Moment is a series highlighting the Law School ideas, experiences, and approaches that have impacted our students and alumni. Video produced by Will Anderson.