Partner Sarah L. Reid Wins 2009 Burton Award for Achievement in Legal Writing

Partner Sarah L. Reid was chosen to receive the 2009 Burton Awards for Legal Achievement, which honors excellence in legal writing. Ms. Reid’s winning submission, Automatic Assignability of Claims: The Tension Between Federal and New York State Law,” was published in the September 2008 issue of The Banking Law Journal.

Each year, only 30 articles are selected from entries submitted by the country’s 1,000 largest law firms. The awards ceremony will be held at the Library of Congress on June 15, 2009. The program is a non-profit effort run in association with the Library of Congress. The guest speakers at the program include Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Author Bryan Garner, Television Screenwriter David E. Kelley and New York State Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye (retired). Bill Press will be the Master of Ceremonies.

Ms. Reid and Mr. Schumacher’s article examined the applicability of federal and New York law to claims filed by investors against financial institutions as indenture trustees for injuries that allegedly occurred years prior to the purchase of the securities.

The Burton Awards are funded by the Burton Foundation, a non-profit, academic effort, devoted to recognizing and rewarding excellence in the legal profession. The program focuses on the refinement and enrichment of legal writing. The submissions were judged by an Academic Board led by Virginia Wise, a renowned teacher at Harvard Law School; Anne E. Kringel, a widely recognized expert in legal writing at the University of Pennsylvania Law School; Grace Tonner, a prominent dean from the University of California Law School at Irvine; Judge Ed Forstenzer, a distinguished judge from California’s Superior Court; and William Ryan, a direct descendent of Noah Webster.