Joseph M. Burns

Bio

Joe is deeply committed to the firm’s labor and employee benefit fund clients.  Joe is fond of noting that serving our clients is a “24-7-365” commitment. 

As a teenager, Joe worked with his father Marty at the firm on weekends and after school.  He learned at an early age of the importance of organized/labor in the lives of working men and women.  Joe’s grandfather, Charles Burns, was an Executive Board Member of ATU Local 308 and a trustee on the CTA–ATU pension plan in 1947.  Joe is a proud third-generation member of ATU Local 308, having worked for the CTA putting himself through college.  Joe’s father, Marty, began as an attorney for Jacobs & Gore in April 1960.  Loyola University School of Law gave him (and nearly every other lawyer in the Burns family) a law degree, and the Illinois Supreme Court gave him his law license in 1979. 

Joe proudly represents a variety of labor organizations, including unions in the transit industry, construction industry, automobile mechanics, and unions in the entertainment industry.  Joe enjoys the role of counselor as much as he loves IRS and DOL matters, arbitrations, and litigating.  We think of these wonderful clients, some of them going back as far as 1958, as being part of our JBOH Family.

 Joe especially loves working for the employee benefit plans which provide such outstanding and well-earned retirement security and decent health insurance to working men and women.  Joe has helped multiple unions start journeymen & apprentice training programs that will help sustain the skilled work force that our Chicago labor community needs to thrive. 

Joe is especially proud that he serves many public pension funds and pension  investment funds as either Board Counsel or fiduciary counsel.  

As counsel to employee benefit funds, Joe attends trustees’ meetings and provides a full range of legal services to employee benefit funds.  Joe handles the funds’ investment relationships and is responsible for negotiating investment management agreements, including complex alternative investment fund agreements.  Joe is especially proud that the firm is the sole counsel to every ERISA jointly-trusteed fund client because the employer trustees respect his and the firm’s independent judgment.

Joe has a Martindale Hubbell peer rating of AV and in 2009 was the first member of the firm elected a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.  In 2009, he was for the first time designated by Illinois Super Lawyers as one of the top attorneys in labor and employment law.

Joe is a member of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Funds and the National Association of Public Pension Attorneys.

Joe has traveled frequently to East Africa to assist with Global Alliance for Africa’s projects dealing with micro-enterprise programs and to support families affected by HIV/AIDS. Joe organized and led two groups of judges, lawyers, and medical professionals on trips to East Africa, to explore micro-finance, legal rights, and therapeutic arts programs.  Joe is also a past Board Member of the Spectrios Institute for Low Vision in Wheaton.

Joe has been married to Penny, his best friend and high school sweetheart, since 1976 and has three exceptional children and four awesome grandchildren.  He absolutely loves being a father and grandfather.  Like the entire Burns family, wherever they live in the U.S., Joe loves the White Sox and the Blackhawks.

Joseph M. Burns

Education

  • A.B., Loyola University, 1976
  • J.D., Loyola University School of Law, 1979

Admissions

  • State of Illinois
  • U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
  • U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois
  • U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Contact

(312) 327-3431
jburns@jbosh.com