Attorney James Spica Elected a Trustee of the American Trust for the British Library

Dickinson Wright PLLC is pleased to announce that Attorney James Spica has been elected a Trustee of the American Trust for the British Library. The American Trust for the British Library is a not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to promote and support the work of one of the world’s greatest research libraries. Formally separated from the British Museum in 1973, the British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and the largest library in the world by number of items catalogued. The American Trust for the British Library was founded in 1979 and is supported through the generosity of its wide membership in the United States and the United Kingdom. Mr. Spica was elected to the Trust’s Board at its 2016 Annual Meeting held on October 17, 2016 at the Century Association in New York City.

Mr. Spica is a Member in Dickinson Wright’s Detroit office. He specializes in trust law and trust banking. He is the principal author of the Michigan Personal Property Trust Perpetuities Act of 2008 and of the multi-statute Michigan “trust decanting” regime enacted in 2012. He is an American Bar Association (ABA) Advisor to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), a member of the ACTEC State Laws Committee, a past member of the Council (governing body) of the Probate and Estate Planning Section of the State Bar of Michigan (2006-2015), and a current member of the Probate and Estate Planning Advisory Board of the Michigan Institute of Continuing Legal Education. He clerked for the Honorable Richard C. Wilbur on the United States Tax Court (1985) and taught jurisprudence, taxation, trusts, and decedents’ estates as an Assistant/Associate Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy (1989-2000, tenured 1996).

Apart from the American Trust for the British Library, Mr. Spica’s bibliophilic associations include the Associates Board of Governors of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan, the Board of Directors of the Grosse Pointe Library Foundation, the Grolier Club of New York, the Classical Association of New England, the Johnson Society of London, the Selden Society, and the Virgil Society. His service on non-profit boards and board advisory committees also includes the Board of the Interlochen Center for the Arts (which he has represented in the Harvard Business School’s Governing Nonprofits for Excellence program), the Tannahill Council of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Planned Giving Council, and the Legal-Financial Network Committee of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

About the American Trust for the British Library
The American Trust for the British Library raises funds to support acquisitions, conservation, and other important projects at the British Library. Recent grants have supported the British Library’s Conservation Center, an art history internship for a Ph.D. candidate from Harvard University, and the Eccles Center for American Studies. To learn more about American Trust for the British Library, please click here.