Contests, Reader Polls

ATL Lawyer of the Year: Nominations, Please

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The year 2009 is almost over, but not just yet — which is a good thing. This means we still have time to solicit your nominations for Above the Law’s LAWYER OF THE YEAR.

In 2008, you crowned then-President Elect Barack Obama your Lawyer of the Year. After being named ATL’s Lawyer of the Year, winning the Nobel Peace Prize must have felt anticlimactic.

The year before that, you went in a very different direction. In 2007, the prize was bestowed upon Loyola 2L. For those of you who weren’t reading the site back then, here’s a concise explanation from the WSJ Law Blog (which also named Loyola 2L its LOTY):

So who — or what — is Loyola 2L? For the non-cognoscenti, he, or she, is purportedly a second-year student, or “2L,” at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. And his claim to fame? For over a year, Loyola 2L has beaten a loud and consistent drum of discontent around the Web by posting in online forums about the job prospects for graduates of nonelite law schools.

Loyola 2L turned out to be something of a Cassandra. He was sounding the alarm about the potential perils of going to a non-elite law school — and taking on six figures worth of debt to do so — back in 2007, well before the legal job market really went into the tank.

Back to the present. Instructions for nominating a 2009 Lawyer of the Year, after the jump.

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Please submit your Lawyer of the Year nominations in the comments to this post. It would be helpful if you could explain why you think the lawyer in question is a worthy nominee. Also feel free to support — or criticize — the nominations of others.

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 we wrote in a prior post:

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.

We’ll review your submissions, pick some finalists, and create a reader poll (which will probably appear after New Year’s). Then you’ll vote, and the winner will be crowned Above the Law’s 2009 Lawyer of the Year.

We look forward to reading your submissions. Thanks!

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UPDATE: The nominations period is now closed. Thank you for all of the names!

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