Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
Historically, especially in major metropolitan areas like Cook County, so many people have taken advantage of access to the courts that justice often seemed to be backlogged because of the number of suits filed. There’s always been an adage in the law, “justice delayed is justice denied.” Over the last 20 years or so alternate dispute resolution, mediation and arbitration services have been recognized by litigants and professionals in the legal field as a way of resolving disputes without necessarily waiting years and years for perceived justice, not to mention complicated “discovery” with filed law suits, depositions, interrogatories, etc. Many retired judges across the country are now involving themselves in mediation arbitration, all under the heading of alternate dispute resolution. One would pay more for the professional services of a mediator or an arbitrator but will have much faster resolution. Perhaps, one can argue, time is money.
Vince Cipolla certainly has the experience in this field to head up such a user-friendly entity. Vince has served as a certified Cook County mandatory arbitration and mediation facilitator for many years. He was one of the original trained arbitrators for Cook County Mandatory Arbitration, and he has served on single and tri-party arbitration panels for the American Arbitration Association, one of the oldest alternate dispute resolution entities in the country. He has served similarly in the State of Illinois, in disputes involving construction, commercial and automobile claims. He is an active member of the International Academy of Dispute Resolution, as well as the dispute resolution committees of the American Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association and Justinian Society of Lawyers.
Vince has paid his dues in the legal profession as partner of the firm of Knight, Hoppe, Kurnik & Knight, Ltd., since 2006. For more than 20 years before that, he was a partner of the firm of Kurnik & Cipolla, Ltd.
Vince earned his B.S. in Humanities from Loyola University Chicago in 1965 and his juris doctorate degree from the John Marshall Law School in 1974. He is also a veteran, having served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. He married his wife, a former registered nurse at Augustana Hospital, in 1967, and has two children, Joseph and Raena, and four beautiful grandchildren.
Vince describes his ethnic background as follows: “Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were born in Sicily. Both sides actually came from the Agrigento Region, where the Cipollas originated in the small town of Aragona.
“My parents were first-generation Italian Americans. We were raised in a typical Italian family environment. My father’s mother lived in the apartment below us, and we had Sunday dinner with her routinely. My maternal grandparents lived in the Lakeview area and on Sundays, but in the evenings, we would go for a second dinner with them.
“Christmas typically involved as many as 30 relatives all crammed together in a relatively small apartment. All of my aunts and uncles lived within a three block radius of where we grew up.”
Another example of the best our community has to offer.
