Minneapolis, October 19, 2015: Brian N. Larson was inducted into the Council of Multiple Listing Services (CMLS) Hall of Fame at the CMLS Conference in Kansas City on October 8, 2015. According to CMLS, “The honor is a means of recognizing and acknowledging a lifetime of leadership, energy, and intellect that improves and elevates the real estate multiple listing service industry.” During its 58-year history, CMLS has been the trade association of the MLS industry in North America, now supporting 178 member organizations that serve more than one million subscribers. Larson is the fourth leader to be inducted into CMLS’s Hall of Fame.
“To many of us, Brian has been a mentor, a counselor, a contributor, a confidant, an organizer, a director, an advocate, a leader, and a friend,” said Shelley Specchio, president of CMLS and CEO of Northern Nevada Regional MLS. “He has made enormous contributions to the MLS Industry, including the refinement and promotion of IDX or Broker Reciprocity, a national policy that empowers brokers to grant listing display rights to each other for advertising on the Internet.”
Larson is “of counsel” to Larson Skinner PLLC, the law firm he founded more than 13 years ago. He has been an attorney and business adviser with a national reputation for serving the real estate vertical. The firm is pre-eminent among those serving real estate multiple listing services and trade associations. Under Larson’s leadership, it focused on strategic legal advice, especially relating to collaborations of MLSs, including copyrights, data sharing, the formation of new regional MLSs, and national collaborations like the MLS Domains Association. As a lawyer, Larson has focused much of his work on intellectual property, e-commerce, databases, web branding issues, the real estate industry, and rule making for online communities.
Larson left his position as managing member of Larson Skinner to take up an appointment as assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in August 2015. There he researches rhetoric and argumentation, especially in legal and professional communication, and teaches technical and professional communication. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Larson’s induction into the CMLS Hall of Fame was preceded by those of Pat Bybee, Jeannette Biddle, and Peter Shuttleworth. The honor recognizes the contribution of the inductee to CMLS and the MLS industry at the close or culmination of the inductee’s career in the MLS Industry.
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ABOUT LARSON SKINNER PLLC: Larson Skinner is a Minneapolis-based law firm with a national client base, focusing its practice on e-commerce, databases, web branding issues, and rule-making for online communities.
