S.F. City Attorney is the only elected official named to the prestigious annual list; one of only five public sector attorneys statewide
SAN FRANCISCO (Sept. 23, 2009) — City Attorney Dennis Herrera was today named to the list of California’s “Top 100 Lawyers” by the Daily Journal, the state’s largest circulation legal newspaper, which publishes daily editions in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Selected from some 850 nominations among the nearly 160,000 active members of the state bar, the compilation represents a “snapshot of the best and brightest California and the legal professional have to offer,” according to David Houston, the Daily Journal’s editor.
Herrera was the lone elected official named to the prestigious annual list for 2009, and one of only five public sector attorneys to be so honored.
One of the honorees, California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George, is an appointed judicial official who is required to stand for retention votes in the general election following his appointment, and thereafter at twelve-year intervals. Other public sector lawyers among the “Top 100 Lawyers” are: Alan Jackson, the Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney who prosecuted the Phil Spector murder trial; Sean K. Kennedy, who oversees the nation’s largest federal public defender’s office in Los Angeles, which is also the nation’s most populous federal trial court; and Sharon B. Majors-Lewis, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s judicial appointments secretary, who has been widely praised for her work to diversify the bench in California.
Today’s “Top 100 Lawyers” supplement in the Daily Journal cites Herrera’s history-making role in leading the first government challenge to the constitutionality of marriage laws that discriminate against gay and lesbian couples, and his office’s successful move earlier this year to intervene as a party to the federal constitutional challenge to Proposition 8. The report noted, too, that, “Herrera also has been kept busy defending San Francisco’s progressive laws against legal challenges,” including his so-far successful efforts to defend the City’s ban on tobacco sales in pharmacies and key provisions of the City’s groundbreaking universal health care program.
More information about the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office is available online at: https://www.sfcityattorney.org