Above The Law’s 2024 Lawyer Of The Year Contest: Nominations Needed

With 2024 nearly in the rearview mirror, we thought it would be a good time to solicit nominations for Above the Law’s annual LAWYER OF THE YEAR competition. Which lawyers made major headlines during the year that was?

We’ll conduct the competition as we’ve done for the past decade. Please submit your nominees to us by email (subject line “Lawyer of the Year 2024”). We will review them and pick a slate of finalists, and then you’ll vote on them in a reader poll.

The winner will join an august group of past LOTY honorees, including Chief Justice John Roberts (2012) and President Barack Obama (2008). But the contest has room for “fun” as well. In 2019, Christopher Hook, a lawyer who told a Biglaw partner to “eat a bowl of dicks” during settlement negotiations took home the grand prize, and in 2015, our champion was a young Texas lawyer by the name of Bryan Wilson — better known to the world as the “Law Hawk,” famous for his irreverent and creative attorney advertisements.

What does it take to be nominated? As we’ve explained before:

What are the criteria for being our Lawyer of the Year? Since you’re doing the nominating and voting, it’s really up to you.

You can nominate a LOTY based on whatever reasoning you choose — e.g., because the lawyer in question is influential, infamous, awesome, or awful.

As reflected in the past victory of Loyola 2L (2007), not all nominees need to be famous — or even named. And as with the past victory of Kyle McEntee and Patrick Lynch (2010), the co-founders of Law School Transparency, you can nominate multiple people if their achievements are closely related.

We have only three things to ask of you before the nominations begin to roll in:

• Please try to nominate actual lawyers.
• Please try to nominate lawyers who are still living.
• Please submit all nominations via email, with this exact subject line: “Lawyer of the Year 2024.”

Let the nominations begin! Please submit your nominations by THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, at 11:59 p.m. (Eastern time). We look forward to reading your thoughts and insights on the potential candidates who will go on to vie for the title of Above the Law’s Lawyer of the Year for 2024.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.