LAWFUEL.COM –
Anniversary Event to be Held in Atlanta, Georgia April 23-25, 2009
(SOUTH CAROLINA) March, 2009 – Best Lawyers, the country’s first and pre-eminent lawyer-rating service, will mark its 25th anniversary in 2009 by honoring the accomplishments of the 1,397 distinguished lawyers from throughout the U.S. who have been listed in its publication since it began rating lawyers in 1983.
The event, to be held in Atlanta, Georgia, April 23 to April 25, will open with a gala at the Georgia Aquarium on Thursday April 23rd, with remarks by Carolyn Lamm, President-Elect of the American Bar Association. On Friday, April 24th at the St. Regis hotel, attendees will engage in panel-led discussions about changes in the legal profession and legal education over the last 25 years. David Boies, one of the country’s most prominent attorneys, will speak at a luncheon.
All proceeds generated by the event will go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
“We are so pleased to be celebrating this milestone and to honor those lawyers who have been with us from the start,” says Steven Naifeh, President and founder of Best Lawyers. Naifeh is a Harvard Law School graduate as well as a Pulitzer-Prize winner author. “We look forward to a successful event in Atlanta, and are proud to be donating all proceeds to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the worthiest institutions in the world.”
Best Lawyers, which published its first directory in 1983, is the oldest lawyer-rating publication in the U.S. The company compiles its listings of outstanding attorneys through exhaustive peer-review surveys. Every year, thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers and Best Lawyers tabulates more than 2.5 million votes. Its annual publication, The Best Lawyers in America, which continues to be the only advertisement-free referral guide to the legal profession, now includes 36,126 attorneys in 78 specialties, covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Best Lawyers now also evaluates lawyers worldwide and publishes its global lists online at www.bestlawyers.com.
The lists are excerpted widely. They appear in Corporate Counsel, which reaches more than 88,000 senior in-house counsel, as well as in The American Lawyer, The National Law Journal, and other legal publications. They also appear in more than 70 city, regional, national, and business publications around the world, ranging from The Washington Post to New York Magazine, and from the Australian Financial Review to Expansion in Spain. Altogether, Best Lawyers lists reach more than 16 million readers.
“The Atlanta event provides an extraordinary opportunity to recognize the careers of the 1,397 lawyers who have been listed in Best Lawyers from its beginning,” says Naifeh. “They have not only contributed in an exceptional way to the legal profession but most of them have also played important civic roles in their communities. Between them, they represent more than 25 millennia of legal experience. Because their insights into the changes in the legal profession should be fascinating and invaluable, we have focused the panel discussions on the changes in the legal profession during their professional lives. That’s also why we have asked each of them to bring a younger partner and a client to this event, so that they can share their collective wisdom with the next generation of eminent lawyers.”
The editors and founders of Best Lawyers are Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, both graduates of the Harvard Law School, class of 1977. Before turning to publishing and writing, Mr. Naifeh worked briefly at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in New York and Mr. Smith at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco.
Together, they have written 12 nonfiction books including four national bestsellers. Their book Jackson Pollock: An American Saga won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1991 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It was also the basis of the Academy-Award winning film “Pollock” starring Ed Harris. In addition to founding and editing Best Lawyers, Smith and Naifeh founded and served as Chairman and CEO of Best Doctors, Inc., from 1994 until 2000.
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