The following 35 lawyers and judges have been singled out for their influence, for better or worse, on the practice of law in Massachusetts during the past 35 years. They have been chosen randomly based on accounts of their successes and/or occasional failures as recorded in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and other publications.
CHRISTOPHER J. ARMSTRONG
A Massachusetts judge for 34 years, Armstrong is best known for his service on the Appeals Court, which was established the same year Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly was founded. As chief of that court from 2000 until his retirement in 2006 (at the mandatory age of 70), he presided over a major expansion of the court and a sizeable shrinking of the time it would take cases to be heard. He continues to serve as an appellate judge in a recall capacity.
FRANCIS X. BELLOTTI
At 84, erstwhile politico and longtime lawyer Bellotti shows few signs of slowing down ― save for the occasional visit to his winter home in Naples, Fla. A former Massachusetts lieutenant governor and attorney general, Bellotti did not succeed in two bids for the governorship. But his reputation in public service, especially as a three-term AG, continues to precede him in private practice, where he is of counsel to the Boston firm of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo.
MARY L. BONAUTO
From her perch as civil rights project director at the Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders since 1990, Bonauto has been instrumental in securing major breakthroughs for same-sex couples. Her role in a 1999 Vermont Supreme Court case, which led to civil unions for gays and lesbians in that state, and in a 2003 Supreme Judicial Court decision, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which found that prohibitions on same-sex marriages in Massachusetts were unconstitutional, only reinforced her reputation as a champion of gay and lesbian rights.
LEO V. BOYLE
As one of the plaintiffs' attorneys in the much-watched case of Milena Del Valle, Boyle once again finds himself engrossed in multi-million-dollar litigation ― this time over Del Valle's July 2006 death in a Big Dig tunnel-ceiling collapse. From his base in a small downtown firm, this former president of the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Association of Trial Lawyers of America has truly made it big in the Boston legal community and beyond.
WAYNE A. BUDD
A native of scrappy Springfield, Budd moved east to Boston College Law School and launched a career that spans the spectrum in public- and private-sector law. From his first job as assistant corporation counsel for the city of Boston, Budd advanced to assistant attorney general and, in 1989, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts. Since 1994, he has served as group president of Bell Atlantic, executive VP at John Hancock Financial Services and partner at Goodwin Procter. He jokes that his friends tease him about not being able to hold onto a job.
THOMAS D. BURNS
With 50-plus years at the bar, Burns is a hardy perennial in Boston's legal community. He put his name to a downtown law firm ― Burns & Levinson ― that endures to this day as others scramble to survive or move to merge, and he built a reputation for himself as a civil-defense lawyer whose professional skills and personal charm are always on display.
MARTHA COAKLEY
After an eight-year stint as Middlesex County district attorney, Coakley, with 73 percent of the vote, was elected attorney general last fall ― the first woman to hold that office in Massachusetts. Barely a year into the job, she already is showing her mettle, having inherited the roiling controversy over faulty construction of the Big Dig. From questionable glue to tainted cement, the cases present no end of challenges to this chief law enforcer for the commonwealth.
CHESTER DARLING
To his opposing counsel, this longtime defender of unpopular causes does not deserve his name. But Darling, now in his late 70s, has not been deterred. From securing a ban on gays and lesbians in South Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade (upheld in a unanimous Supreme Court ruling) to weighing in on the right of a Woburn minister to use corporal punishment on his own son, Darling has not been one to shrink from the side of conservatives. All the while, this now-retired attorney defended his advocacy as a fight for equality for all.
SALVATORE F. DiMASI
When the history of the early 21st-century Massachusetts House of Representatives is written, DiMasi's name is likely to be prominent in that account. He gained the speaker's gavel in 2004 and has since amassed considerable power on Beacon Hill while the offices of Senate president and governor have been in transition. A longtime attorney, DiMasi has put his stamp on several major law-related measures during his nearly 30 years in the House, especially when he was chairing committees on the judiciary, criminal justice and banking.
MICHAEL S. DUKAKIS
As a young Harvard Law School graduate, Dukakis made known his interest in politics early, winning election as chairman of the Democratic Town Committee in 1960 in his hometown of Brookline. By 1974, he had been elected governor; defeat followed in a 1978 re-election bid, but in 1982 he was back in the State House corner office. He left a noteworthy legacy as governor with several of his appointees to the bench, including Paul J. Liacos, Roderick L. Ireland, Paul A. Chernoff and Julian T. Houston. Dukakis reached the pinnacle of his political career in 1988 as the Democratic nominee for president but lost to Republican George H.W. Bush.
THOMAS E. DWYER JR.
A dynamo in the Democratic Party, Dwyer has had a long association with the Kennedy family. More recently, Dwyer has been corralling local lawyers to attend fund-raisers for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. All the while, he maintains a busy Boston law practice, with fellow name partner Michael A. Collora at Dwyer & Collora, and keeps close ties to the organized bar as a former president of the Boston Bar Association.
VICTOR J. GARO
Medford attorney Garo scored a major victory for a client in U.S. District Court this summer when Judge Nancy Gertner ordered the federal government to pay $101 million-plus for its role in the wrongful convictions of four men who spent decades in prison for a crime they did not commit. Garo was lead attorney for one of the men, Joseph Salvati; the lawyer is said to have spent more than 25,000 pro bono hours on the case.
PAUL G. GARRITY
Fondly recalled as "the sludge judge" in the August 2004 obituaries written about him, Garrity helped coordinate the cleanup of Boston Harbor while he served on the Superior Court. As a Boston Housing Court judge, he was instrumental in improving conditions at the city's public housing developments. His founding of an alternative-dispute-resolution firm after his retirement from the bench set an example for other ex-judges eager to stay active as lawyers.
W. ARTHUR GARRITY JR.
If ever a local judge embodied the unpopular decisions that must be made in the line of judicial duty, it was W. Arthur Garrity Jr. of the U.S. District Court. In June 1974, Garrity ruled that the Boston School Committee had "intentionally brought about and maintained racial segregation" in the Boston public schools. Six months later, with no desegregation plan from the committee, Garrity came up with his now-famous ― his critics would say "infamous" ― busing remedy.
NANCY GERTNER
A member of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts since fellow Yale University Law School graduate Bill Clinton named her to that judgeship in 1994 when he was president, Gertner gave new meaning to the phrase "high profile" this summer. On July 26, with media from around the country watching her, the judge took her seat in her Boston courtroom and proceeded to order the federal government to pay a record-setting $101.75 million in the case of four men wrongfully convicted for a 1965 murder.
L. SCOTT HARSHBARGER
Public service is what this now-private practitioner is best known for. He served as general counsel of the state Ethics Commission, as Middlesex County district attorney and as state attorney general before taking the helm of Common Cause, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group. Returning to Massachusetts, he accepted appointments to commissions looking into reform of the state's correctional system and of the public pension program. As senior counsel at Proskauer Rose, he chairs that firm's national Pro Bono Initiative.
MONROE L. INKER
Ranked as one of the nation's top divorce lawyers, Monroe L. Inker was truly a legend in his time. The New York native, who died at age 80 in April 2006, grew famous with his celebrity-studded list of clients, including Boston Celtic great Robert Parish and literary luminary Norman Mailer. He was credited with making no-fault divorce possible in this state and for the 1975 passage of a statute on equitable division of marital assets. And, as the headline on a Boston Globe obituary on Inker noted, he "wrote the book on divorces" as co-author of "Massachusetts Practice: Family Law and Practice."
RODERICK L. IRELAND
Ireland made Massachusetts history 10 years ago when he became the first black to sit on the Supreme Judicial Court. At the time of his SJC appointment, he was not unfamiliar with the duties of an appellate judge, having already served on the Appeals Court for seven years. He also logged 13 years as a Juvenile Court judge. In 2001, the Massachusetts Bar Association and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly honored Ireland with their Excellence in the Law Award.
PAUL J. LIACOS
Born in Peabody, the son of the first Greek-born Massachusetts lawyer, Liacos made his mark in the profession early ― as a member of the Boston University School of Law faculty and in a family law practice, Liacos & Liacos. As a member of the Supreme Judicial Court and, for seven years, its chief, he is said to have written more than 800 decisions. He also wrote the well-regarded "Handbook of Massachusetts Evidence."
JOAN A. LUKEY
A fixture in downtown Boston's legal community, Lukey has been a member of WilmerHale (ne´e Hale and Dorr) since 1974. Now a partner in the firm's litigation department, Lukey has devoted considerable time to the organized bar ― as a president of the Boston Bar Association and a member of the prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers. She also has excelled at writing, having penned op-ed columns for numerous publications, including Lawyers Weekly.
MARGARET H. MARSHALL
A native of South Africa, Marshall came to New England in the late 1960s to pursue graduate studies ― for a master's degree at Harvard University and a law degree at Yale University. She practiced law in Boston, notably at Choate, Hall & Stewart, before returning to an alma mater, Harvard, to be its vice president and general counsel. She was named to the Supreme Judicial Court in 1996 and three years later became its first woman chief justice.
RALPH C. MARTIN II
Ever since he became Suffolk County district attorney in 1992, Ralph Martin, black and a Republican, has demonstrated that one need not be white and a Democrat to advance in Boston's political-legal community. After serving as DA for a decade, Martin decamped for Bingham McCutchen and private practice, but he has remained in the public eye ― most recently as a chairman of the Judicial Nominating Commission.
REGINA M. PISA
No stranger to this area, Pisa is a native of Somerville who, after graduating from law school in 1982, returned to Massachusetts to work in one of its time-honored law firms ― Goodwin, Procter & Hoar, as it was known then. She worked her way up the career ladder and, in the vanguard of women managing partners, took the reins of what is known now as Goodwin Procter. No. 1 (with Ropes & Gray) on Lawyers Weekly's 2007 list of the state's 100 largest law firms, Goodwin, under Pisa's guidance, continues to expand ― all the while maintaining its name and its Boston base.
R. ROBERT POPEO
He may be last on the nameplate of his downtown Boston firm ― Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, but Popeo is no laggard when it comes to law or politics. His work as an attorney was on full display this summer when he represented a Big Dig concrete supplier in a $50 million settlement, and his role as a political mover and shaker is readily apparent in his contributions to the campaigns of major politicos.
FRANCIS J. QUIRICO
From humble beginnings in Pittsfield, where he worked in his father's carpentry shop, Quirico came east to law school at Northeastern University, where he supported himself with work in a Boston cabinet-making shop. In 1956, he was named to the Superior Court and gained fame as the judge in the so-called Boston Common Garage case; in 1969, he became the first American of Italian descent to sit on the Supreme Judicial Court. During his tenure on the SJC, the court addressed several major public policy issues, including the death penalty, abortion rights and school prayer.
THOMAS F. REILLY
A longtime denizen of the Democratic Party in Massachusetts, Reilly seemed a shoo-in for his party's gubernatorial nomination last year until he encountered the well-oiled campaign machinery rolled out by Deval L. Patrick. But no one will discount the public service record of Reilly (now in private practice at Greenberg Traurig in Boston), first as Middlesex County district attorney and then as two-term attorney general.
JAMES D. St. CLAIR
This trial lawyer, whose name graced the letterhead of the venerable Boston firm of Hale and Dorr (now WilmerHale) for decades, earned his stripes as a young assistant to the firm's senior attorney, Joseph N. Welch, famous for having confronted Sen. Joseph McCarthy about the senator's sense of decency during the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings of the early 1950s. Twenty years later, St. Clair was again in the national spotlight as then-President Richard M. Nixon's special Watergate counsel. In the 1990s, he was recruited by Raymond L. Flynn, mayor of Boston, to look into Boston Police Department practices.
RICHARD J. TESTA
Founder in 1973 of a Boston firm that would bear his name (Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault), Testa was in the forefront of legal representation of fledgling high-tech companies ― Digital Equipment Corp. and Teradyne, among them ― that helped build the reputation of metropolitan Boston as a technology titan. His law firm prospered, too, until the technology industry went into a slide and, sadly, Testa died in December 2002.
J. OWEN TODD
With frequent appearances before the Board of Bar Overseers on behalf of lawyers who may have transgressed, Boston attorney and former Superior Court Judge J. Owen Todd has become something of the go-to lawyer when the BBO comes calling. He also is well known for having taken on a misconduct case of another sort, representing then-Cardinal Bernard Law when revelations of sexual abuse by local priests came to light.
ALLAN van GESTEL
After more than a decade on the Superior Court, Judge Allan van Gestel takes his final leave at the end of this year. The onetime civil litigator from Goodwin Procter has been so valued as presiding judge of his court's Business Litigation Section that, when he reaches his 72d birthday this December, he will have served in a recall capacity for two years beyond the mandatory retirement age of 70.
DANIEL B. WINSLOW
Winslow gained notice as chief legal counsel to then-Gov. Mitt Romney when he overhauled the judicial-nominating procedures to make the selection process more open and fair. A former Wrentham District Court judge, Winslow has kept his hand in the public sector since he left the State House and the bench and took up the practice of law in Boston. He is actively raising funds in Massachusetts on behalf of the Republican presidential bid of his former boss, Romney, and earlier this year met with electoral success himself when he was elected town moderator in Wrentham.
ROBERT G. WOOLF
He was a pioneer in many a lawyer's dream specialty ― athletic representation. Among the stars, athletic and otherwise, represented by Bob Woolf Associates were basketball's Larry Bird, football's Doug Flutie and TV's Larry King. Dark-haired, with a ready smile, Woolf cut a wide swath in this sports-minded town, and he became only more recognizable by his very public appearances with his famous clients.
WILLIAM G. YOUNG
This native New Yorker came to Cambridge in the early 1960s to study at Harvard and its law school and went on to carve out a career first as a private practitioner and then as a public servant. As much a lawyer and a judge, Young has been a teacher, lecturing in law at Boston College Law School and at the law schools of Boston and Harvard universities. He was named to the Superior Court in 1978 and to the U.S. District Court in 1985, ascending to a six-year term as chief of the latter court in 1999.
JAY S. ZIMMERMAN
First elected managing partner of Bingham, Dana & Gould in 1994 after seven years in charge of its London office, Zimmerman built the firm into the behemoth that (renamed) Bingham McCutchen is today and, in so doing, developed a reputation as a leader in the development of U.S.-based international law firms. From a regional firm with fewer than 200 lawyers, Bingham, under Zimmerman, has grown more than fourfold with 13 offices worldwide. He presided over several acquisitions by the firm during the intervening years, but the 2002 merger with the West Coast litigation firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen was key in helping Bingham McCutchen expand its national reach ― and acquire its shortened name.
SAMUEL E. ZOLL
Charged with the administration of the state's District courts after the untimely death of reform-minded Chief Justice Franklin N. Flaschner, Zoll, in 1976, picked up where his predecessor left off. Twenty-eight years later, when he retired from the bench, Zoll left a court system credited for the professionalism of its managers and the competence of its staff. He had eliminated trial de novo and had instituted major changes in the handling of jury instructions, bail and domestic violence cases. "Indeed," a June 2004 Lawyers Weekly editorial noted on the chief judge's retirement, "people saw justice."
