Join the Champions of the Illinois Bar Foundation on May 20, 2026 in Peoria, IL as we honor three distinguished supporters of the Illinois Bar Foundation: Nicholas J. Bertschy (Heyl Royster Voelker & Allen, P.C.), Timothy L. Bertschy (Heyl Royster Voelker & Allen, retired) and Richard W. Zuckerman (Law Offices of Richard W. Zuckerman).
Meet the Honorees
Nicholas J. Bertschy (Heyl Royster Voelker & Allen)
Nick Bertschy has earned a reputation as a creative, versatile, and challenging litigator. As Chair of the firm’s Casualty/Tort Litigation Practice, Nick defends significant personal injury cases, which often involve catastrophic loss and wrongful death. He is a forceful and effective negotiator who has advantageously mediated and resolved many complex cases. In healthcare malpractice, nursing home and LTC litigation, product liability, construction liability, premises liability, vehicular accident, and liquor liability, he has successfully sole/first-chaired high-exposure cases to verdicts and obtained many outright dismissals and summary judgments. Nick also co-chairs the firm’s Product Liability Practice and Liquor Liability Practice Group.
A firm believer in Lawyers Giving Back, Nick is an avid supporter of local charitable endeavors, including United Way, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Illinois, UIF/Pediatric Resource Center, Boys and Girls Clubs, Peoria Area Food Bank, Peoria Historical Society, and Peoria Art Guild. In the legal community, Nick was honored to serve for nine years on the Board of Directors of the Illinois Bar Foundation. In that capacity, he also served as the long-standing chair of the Long-Range Planning Committee, responsible for many innovations leading directly to the rapid growth of membership and advancement of the financial capacity of the Foundation to carry out its charitable mission.
Nick is a Founding Peoria County Bar Foundation member and substantially supports Prairie State Legal Services and Court Appointed Special Advocates [CASA]. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and was among a select group of lawyers requested to serve on the Steering Committee for the Lawyers Feeding Illinois campaign and a Founding Contributor of the William H. Neukom Fellows Research Chair in Diversity and Law at the American Bar Foundation. Nick is also the co-author of IICLE®’s PRODUCTS LIABILITY PRACTICE Handbook.
Timothy L. Bertschy (Heyl Royster Voelker & Allen, ret.)
Tim is a retired attorney and former Managing Partner of Heyl, Royster, Voelker & Allen, P.C. His legal practice was primarily focused on representing businesses and governmental entities in a wide range of commercial litigation and transactional matters. Tim successfully argued cases before the Illinois Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Several of his cases have been included in legal textbooks for the principles of law which they established. He was designated in the “Leading Lawyer” and “Super Lawyer” lists for Illinois and was included in “The Best Lawyers in America” (2010-2019). He was a federal receiver at the request of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.
Tim is past chair of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) and past vice chair of the Illinois Supreme Court Executive Committee on the Practice of Law. He currently serves as a special appointee by the Supreme Court to the Illinois Judicial Conference Legal Deserts Task Force. He is a past president of the Illinois State Bar Association and a former Illinois Bar Foundation board member, serving 13 years. He served on the American Bar Association Board of Governors, representing Illinois and Ohio, and was a delegate to the ABA House of Delegates for over 15 years. He chaired the ABA Standing Committee on Publishing Oversight for four years. He is a former co-chair of the ABA Section of Litigation’s Business Torts, Minority Trial Lawyer, and Immigration Litigation Committees. Tim was chair of the United States District Court Advisory Committee on Local Rules (Central District, Illinois). He was co-chair of the Illinois Legal Needs Study II and was president of the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, Illinois Lawyers Assistance Program, Illinois Chapter of the American Judicature Society, Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice, Illinois Township Attorneys Association, and American Counsel Association. He has served the Peoria County Bar Association in several roles, including being the first Chairman of the Diversity Committee of the PCBA. He served as co-chair of the Prairie State Legal Services Campaign for Legal Services Committee. He has written frequently for legal publications and is a past winner of the ISBA Lincoln Legal Writing Award. In 2020, Tim received the Lincoln The Lawyer Award from the Abraham Lincoln Association in recognition of his legal career.
Tim has been a member and officer of numerous community boards, including the Peoria Park District Board of Trustees, and has received several community awards. He is past Steering Committee Co-Chair of the Peoria City/County Joint Commission on Racial Justice and Equity and currently teaches in the OLLI Program.
Richard W. Zuckerman (Law Offices of Richard W. Zuckerman)
RICHARD W. ZUCKERMAN was born on July 4, 1951, in Manhattan, New York City, New York at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children founded by the first female graduate of an American medical school. His Mother, Jessica (Lamb) had emigrated to the United States from England in 1948 where she met and married his Father, Leon, that same year. In 1954 Richard moved to Dekalb, Illinois and in 1958 to Skokie, Illinois. He graduated from Niles East High School in 1969 and began attending Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois the same year. On the first Earth Day (April 22, 1970) he met his soulmate, Karen Koeller, at Bradley. They were married on September 17, 1976. He graduated from Bradley University (B.S.) in 1973. Richard attended The John Marshall Law School from which he graduated with a Juris Doctorate degree in 1976. He was admitted to practice law in Illinois in 1976.
Although he had clerked for Davis, Jones & Baer in Chicago he returned to Peoria where Karen was employed as an educator. Initially he was employed by Central Illinois Legal Services which became part of Prairie State Legal Services in 1977. In 1980 he went into the private practice of law in an ‘Of Counsel’ association with Goldfine & Bowles, PC. In 1994 he founded the law firm of Law Offices Of Richard W. Zuckerman and entered into an office-sharing arrangement with Cusack, Fleming, Gilfillan, and O’Day (currently Cusack & Gilfillan) that continues in 2026. From the beginning of his practice of law Richard has concentrated his practice in the area of Family Law. He received Mediation training at Aurora University in 1999 and was one of the first Family Law Mediators in the Tenth Judicial Circuit. He was instrumental in the adoption by Peoria County of the Children First program for parents in divorce and parentage cases before it became an Illinois Supreme Court requirement.
Richard has been a Fellow of the nationally renowned American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) since 1993. He was the first, and only, Fellow from outside of Cook and the Collar Counties to serve as President of the Illinois Chapter which he did from 2004-2006. He is former member of the AAML-Illinois Board of Managers. In 2019 he was honored with the prestigious Samuel S. Berger Award from the Chapter for his contributions to the practice of Family Law in Illinois.
Richard has held numerous positions with the Illinois State Bar Association since 1981 including service on the Board of Governors from 2000-2006 and as Treasurer (2005-2006). He has served five terms, including a current one, as an ISBA Assembly member representing the 10th Circuit. He has Chaired the General Practice Section Council, Amicus Committee, Task Force on the Unauthorized Practice Of Law, He was Chair of the Illinois State Bar Association Family Law Section Council (1998-1999) and served on that Council in various capacities from 1985 to 2025. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Illinois Bar Foundation from 2004 to 2012. In addition to the aforementioned, he has served on seventeen other Councils, Committees, and Task Forces during his forty-nine years of membership in the Association.
He has been involved with the Peoria County Bar Association from 1977 to the present. He served as the President of the Peoria County Bar Association (PCBA) Board of Directors in 2018-2019. He has served on numerous committees and Chaired a number of them. He Co-Chaired the 2005-2006 Campaign For Legal Services. He was a member and officer of the Abraham Lincoln Inn of Court and was its President from 2002 to 2003. He was a member of the 2025 class of the Peoria County Bar Association Pillars of the Bar.
He was an original appointed member of the Illinois General Assembly created Family Law Study Committee from 2008 to 2012 when it concluded its work of rewriting the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act. He contributed to the lobbying efforts to obtain the approval of the Rewrite by the Legislature and the Governor in 2015. He is a long-time member, and, since 2018, Chair, of the Illinois Child Support Advisory Committees, which recently began the 2024 Quadrennial Review of the Illinois’ child support guidelines.
He was a a volunteer for the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission for over twenty-eight years including service on the Inquiry Board as a member and on the Hearing Panel as both a member and Chair.
He was the appellate attorney for Amy Langman in the Illinois Supreme Court case of Wickham v. Byrne/Langman v. Langman in which the Illinois Supreme Court declared the then existing statute on grandparent visitation unconstitutional. He lectures annually on new legislation and has written and lectured on child support, ethics and other areas of family law. He has been published in the Illinois Bar Journal and ISBA Family Law newsletter and Family Law Handbook. He has been listed in both Illinois’ Leading Lawyers and Illinois’ Super Lawyers since their inceptions and is Preeminent AV-rated by Martindale-Hubbell. He is a recipient of the Michael S. Cohen Award (2014) for legal education, the Illinois State Bar Association’s Richard A. Teas Legislative Support Award for his legislative work (2016), and ISBA Board of Governor’s Awards for his contributions to the IMDMA Rewrite Collating Committee (2016) and for his individual contributions to the ISBA and the profession of law (2019).
Richard has also been involved in state and local boards and commissions including the Citizen’s Utility Board, Peoria Housing Authority (Chair 2003-2012), and Peoria Public Arts Advisory Commission (Chair 2021-present) He has been involved with and presided over numerous community groups including the Moss-Bradley Residential Association, West Bluff Council, Western Avenue Greenway, West Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services, and the Peoria Opportunities Foundation. He was twice President of the Peoria Art Guild during his 35 years on its Board Of Directors.
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