Leonard M. Tillem (June 9, 1944 – January 13, 2022) was an American attorney and radio broadcaster. He hosted "The Len Tillem Show," which is considered to be one of the first legal affairs radio show in the U.S.

Early life

Tillem was born on June 9, 1944, in

The Bronx The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...

New York City, New York New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on New York Harbor, one of the world's largest natural harb ...

, to Jewish immigrants from Poland who spoke Yiddish. He grew up in Belle Harbor, Queens. He attended Far Rockaway High School, graduating in 1962. He earned his

Juris Doctor A Juris Doctor, Doctor of Jurisprudence, or Doctor of Law (JD) is a graduate-entry professional degree that primarily prepares individuals to practice law. In the United States and the Philippines, it is the only qualifying law degree. Other j ...

(J.D.) from the

New York University School of Law The New York University School of Law (NYU Law) is the law school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. Established in 1835, it was the first law school established in New York City and is the oldest survivin ...

and was admitted to the

State Bar of California The State Bar of California is an administrative division of the Supreme Court of California which licenses attorneys and regulates the practice of law in California. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law ...

on January 18, 1972.

Career

Tillem got his start in radio in 1990 on Napa Valley's KVON. He moved onto KSRO in Santa Rosa before

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

mega-station KGO gave him a Sunday afternoon show in 2000. His show would eventually move to the noon weekday timeslot, where it was the highest ranked program. On December 1, 2011, KGO changed to an all-news format and terminated the employment of all of its weekday radio program hosts except for Ronn Owens. Tillem resumed his radio program on the Bay Area radio station KKSF NewsTalk 910 AM San Francisco on January 3, 2012. Tillem ceased broadcasting on NewsTalk 910 on March 29, 2013. From then until July 23, 2013, he continued his radio program exclusively on the web via

podcasts A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an episodic series of digital audio files that users can download to a personal device or stream to listen to at a time of their ...

Personal life and death

Tillem's niece, Joya Tillem, is a physician and is married to filmmaker

Jon Favreau Jonathan Kolia Favreau ( ; born October 19, 1966) is an American actor and filmmaker. As an actor, Favreau has appeared in films such as ''Rudy (film), Rudy'' (1993), ''PCU (film), PCU'' (1994), ''Swingers (1996 film), Swingers'' (1996), ''Very ...

since 2000. He died on January 13, 2022, at the age of 77 at his home in

Sonoma, California Sonoma () is a city in Sonoma County, California, United States, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Sonoma is one of the principal cities of California's Wine Country and the center of the Sonoma Valley AVA. Sonoma' ...

References

External links

Len Tillem & Associates
— Tillem's law practice
Len Tillem's show podcasts
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tillem, Len 1944 births 2022 deaths Lawyers from the Bronx Mass media people from the Bronx California lawyers Lawyers from New York City American crime podcasters American people of Polish-Jewish descent American radio personalities New York University School of Law alumni