Partner Robert Haig Honored by the New York Bar Foundation with Lifetime Achievement Award

The New York Bar Foundation bestowed its Lifetime Achievement Award on Kelley Drye partner Robert Haig during its 2020 Annual Meeting. The award, presented by Foundation President Lesley Rosenthal, recognizes Haig’s outstanding professional achievements, dedication to the legal profession, and commitment to the foundation’s ideals.

Haig, who served as the foundation’s president from 2003 to 2006, has been described in published articles as one of the nation’s foremost commercial litigators” and one of New York’s most preeminent commercial litigators.”  He has been at the forefront of the national and international trend toward the creation of business courts (he has helped to create business courts in 21 states and eight foreign countries).  He was the co-chair of the Commercial Courts Task Force established by Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye in 1995 to create and refine the Commercial Division of the New York State Supreme Court (the nation’s first general trial court devoted exclusively to business litigation).  He is now the chair of the Commercial Division Advisory Council established by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman in 2013 to advise him on an ongoing basis about all matters involving and surrounding the Commercial Division, as well as to keep him apprised of developments in the business world that may affect the court system.  On November 16, 2008, Haig was inducted as an Honorary Charter Member of the American College of Business Court Judges in recognition of his efforts to develop business courts in New York and many other states and countries.

Haig is the editor-in-chief of the two leading treatises on business litigation in federal and New York State courts—Business and Commercial Litigation in Federal Courts and Commercial Litigation in New York State Courts— and is also the editor-in-chief of Successful Partnering Between Inside and Outside Counsel, the definitive treatise on relationships between inside and outside counsel for corporate clients.