Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Thursday, May 29, 2014

 

Page 3

 

LACBA Names Edith Matthai as Shattuck-Price Award Recipient

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

Former Los Angeles County Bar Association President Edith R. Matthai will receive this year’s Shattuck-Price Outstanding Lawyer Award, the association said yesterday.

The award, created in 1968 to honor two LACBA presidents who died in office, is the highest honor given by the association to practicing lawyers.

Matthai is well deserving of the award, LACBA President Patricia Egan Daehnke said in a statement. “Edith is the embodiment of the type of attorney that the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Shattuck-Price Outstanding Lawyer Award represents,” Daehnke said.  

“Edith has a well-earned reputation among the judiciary, colleagues, adversaries and state leaders as a role model of civility, professionalism and collaboration to improve the legal profession and our judicial system,” Daehnke continued. “Edith is a brilliant trial lawyer and compelling advocate.  She is a remarkable lawyer and an inspiration to us all.”

EDITH R. MATTHAI

Former LACBA President

Matthai has been described as a “lawyer’s lawyer,” having done attorney malpractice cases for 30 years. She has also represented judicial officers before the Commission on Judicial Performance and has practiced before trial and appellate courts in many types of cases, including business, probate, family, securities, intellectual property, and bankruptcy law matters.

She is a past member of the California Judicial Council and of its Advisory Committee on Civil Jury Instructions. Her term on the council, from 2010 to 2013, included membership on the oversight committee for the later-abandoned Central Case Management System.

She is the co-author of Matthew Bender Practice Guides (2003); California Civil Discovery, Vol. 1 and 2; California Pretrial Procedure, Vol. 1-3 and the CEB California Civil Discovery Practice, Vol. 1 and 2, among other publications, and has been a speaker or panelist in dozens of legal education programs.

She serves on the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which reviews the qualifications of potential appointments to the federal bench. She is also a past President of the California Defense Counsel, the Association of Southern California Defense Counsel and the Los Angeles Chapter of American Board of Trial Advocates.

Matthai is a former chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability and has been certified by the California State Bar as a specialist in Legal Malpractice law.  She is also a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. 

In 2013, she was the first woman named the CAL-ABOTA Trial Lawyer of the Year and in 2008 was named by the Litigation Section of the California State Bar as the California Trial Lawyer of the Year.

She said in a statement:

“It is a great honor to join the past recipients of this award, all of whom have made extraordinary contributions to our community. Thank you so much, LACBA, for this incredible recognition.”

LACBA said the award, which honors “a lawyer who has shown extraordinary dedication to the high principles of the legal profession and to improving the administration of justice in Los Angeles County,” would be presented during the annual Installation and Awards Dinner June 26 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles.

Matthai graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 1971 and from Hastings College of the Law in 1975.

 

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