Friday, May 6, 2011
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LACBA Selects Ordin to Receive Shattuck-Price Award
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Los Angeles County Bar Association yesterday announced that it has selected County Counsel Andrea Sheridan Ordin as this year’s recipient of the organization’s highest honor—the Shattuck-Price Outstanding Lawyer Award.
Ordin is scheduled to receive the award at LACBA’s Installation Dinner on June 29.
The award was established in 1968 to honor two former LACBA presidents who died in office, Edward S. Shattuck in 1965 and Ira M. Price II in 1967, and recognizes extraordinary contributions to improving the administration of justice and outstanding dedication to the high principles of the legal profession.
LACBA President Alan K. Steinbrecher said Ordin, who headed the organization in 2001-2, was chosen as this year’s recipient “because she has served as a pioneer for women in the legal profession and has had a profound impact on the influence of the law in each of our lives.”
Ordin in 2009 became the first woman to serve as county counsel since the position was established in 1913.
Prior to this, she was a partner in the Los Angeles office of the international law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where she focused her practice on complex business and environmental litigation and international corporate investigations. Ordin also oversaw the firm’s pro bono programs in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
She attended college and law school at UCLA and then handled civil, criminal and constitutional cases in the California Attorney General’s Office before serving briefly as LACBA’s executive director in the 1970s.
In 1975, then-Los Angeles County District Attorney John Van de Kamp named her the first female assistant district attorney, the office’s third-highest job, and two years later then-President Jimmy Carter appointed Ordin as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.
Ordin was the first woman to serve in the post and the third to serve as a U.S. attorney in the country. She rejoined Van de Kamp after he became California attorney general in 1983, and served as chief assistant attorney general in charge of the Public Rights Division. The division is responsible for all environmental, consumer, anti-trust, charitable trust and civil rights litigation for the state.
Ordin has also been deeply involved in oversight of the Los Angeles Police Department. In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, she was named to the Christopher Commission, which investigated the factors that led to the beating of Rodney King and subsequent uprising.
In 2005, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa appointed Ordin to the Police Commission, the five-member civilian board that oversees LAPD policy and practices, and she was elected vice president of the commission in 2009.
Copyright 2011, Metropolitan News Company