Title:Founding Partner of Keller and Heckman Establishes Law Center Scholarship

Jerome H. Heckman (C’48, L’53) was a senior and founding partner of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Keller and Heckman. The firm has a broad practice in regulatory law, litigation and business transactions for over forty years.

And it’s all partly because of pickles and prize money.

When Heckman began law school, tuition was $150 a semester. He had a wife and baby. To help make ends meet, he sold pickles for his uncle for $75 a week. It still wasn’t enough.

“At that time if you maintained the highest average in the law class, you won a $50 Faculty Prize to use toward tuition,” remembered Heckman. “If you were second, you got $25. My first semester, I got $25, and that really upset me because I needed the money. So from then on, I got $50, every semester until I graduated.”

A local bookstore owner asked the Washington, D.C., native how he managed to do so well in class despite his other obligations. Heckman confided that he outlined every course beginning several days before the exam. The bookstore owner typed up the outlines, sold them, and paid Heckman 30 percent.

“That covered the rest of the tuition,” he said. “That wasn’t a bad deal”-even considering the jokes made by Paul Dean (L’46, LLM’52, H’69) that he was turning Georgetown into a correspondence school.

Perhaps not surprisingly because of his own struggles to pay his tuition, Heckman made a gift of a charitable remainder trust to provide scholarships for law students. The trust provided the security of a lifetime income, reduced taxes and avoided the capital gains tax on the assets placed in the trust.

“I decided that it was a real good financial decision for my wife and me and would ultimately provide students with scholarships to ease their tuition burden, said Heckman.

“I care a lot about young lawyers,” he continued. “We started a law firm with two older guys, two associates and five law clerks. And now we have 70 or more lawyers and a dozen full-time Ph.Ds. In one way or another, all those lawyers grew out of pyramids that were built by training young lawyers.”

Heckman, whose firm also has offices in Brussels and San Francisco, was a recognized expert in food and drug law. He represented domestic and foreign corporations and trade associations before the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and other government agencies. Since 1954, he had served as General Counsel to The Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc.

His honors included being inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame in 1986, awarded the Spes Hominum medal by the National Sanitation Foundation in 1987 and presented with a Director’s Special Citation Award from the Food and Drug Administration in 2000 for his participation in the establishment of a new system for FDA approval of food contact surfaces. In 2001, Heckman was the recipient of the Paul R. Dean Award, the highest honor the Georgetown University Law Center bestows on an alumnus.

Heckman had two sons and four grandchildren, aged two to thirteen. His wife, Ilona, is a leading domestic relations lawyer in Virginia, who heads up her own firm. Besides his family, his firm and a lifelong interest in regulatory issues, born during the days he was the federal legislation editor for the Law Journal, he was interested in seeing Georgetown thrive.

“The Georgetown University Law Center is important to the Washington community, to future law students and to lawyers,” he said. “It does an excellent job and it’s well worth supporting. And we all owe it a lot. I sincerely hope my fellow graduates will help Georgetown attract the best students by making sure there will be funds for scholarships.” 

Mr. Heckman passed away in 2013.  Georgetown will be forever grateful for Mr. Heckman’s ultimate gift to support student scholarships at the Law Center.

For more information on establishing a charitable remainder trust or other planned giving questions, please call 800-347-8067, e-mail plannedgiving@georgetown.edu, or fill out our information request form.