Announcements

Best Lawyers, the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession, has awarded San Francisco Lawyer of the Year honors for 2010 to William K. Coblentz for Land Use & Zoning Lawyer of the Year, Pamela S. Duffy for Real Estate Lawyer of the Year, and William T. Hutton for Tax Lawyer of the Year. These Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass attorneys received three of the sixteen Lawyers of the Year honors awarded by Best Lawyers. Managing partner Jeffrey Knowles conveyed, "This honor attests to the excellent work and dedication of these partners. Three of the sixteen recipients of this honor are lawyers from Coblentz—more than any other law firm in San Francisco."

After more than a quarter of a century in publication, Best Lawyers is designating “Lawyers of the Year” in high-profile legal specialties in large legal communities. Only a single lawyer in each specialty in each community is being honored as the “Lawyer of the Year.”

Best Lawyers compiles its lists of outstanding attorneys by conducting exhaustive peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers. The current, 16th edition of The Best Lawyers in America (2010), is based on more than 2.8 million detailed evaluations of lawyers by other lawyers.  The lawyers being honored as “Lawyers of the Year” have received particularly high ratings in our surveys by earning a high level of respect among their peers for their abilities, professionalism, and integrity.

Steven Naifeh, Managing Editor of Best Lawyers, says, “We continue to believe – as we have believed for more than 25 years – that recognition by one’s peers is the most meaningful form of praise in the legal profession."