On August 15, 2017 it was announced that Freehill partner Peter Gutowski has been recognized as Best Lawyers® 2018 New York City Admiralty Maritime “Lawyer of the Year.” This is the third time in five years that the Lawyer of the Year has been a Freehill partner, with Jack Walsh having been named for 2014 and Bill Juska for 2015.
In addition, it was announced by Best Lawyers® that seventeen lawyers from Freehill Hogan & Mahar have been selected by their peers for inclusion in 2018 edition of The Best Lawyers in America© in the category of admiralty and maritime law in New York. For the fifth consecutive year the firm was the Top Listed admiralty firm in the United States, with more attorneys listed than any other firm. The selected attorneys for 2018 are: Patrick Bonner, Thomas Canevari, Michael Fernandez, Peter Gutowski, William Juska, John Karpousis, Eric Lenck, Wayne Meehan, Manuel Molina, Mark Muller, Don Murnane, William Pallas, James Ross, Thomas Russo, Michael Unger, Gina Venezia and John Walsh.
Since it was first published in1983, Best Lawyers® has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Best Lawyers lists are compiled based on an exhaustive peer-review evaluation. 83,000 industry leading attorneys are eligible to vote (from around the world), and Best Lawyers has received almost 10 million evaluations of the legal abilities of other lawyers based on their specific practice areas. For the 2018 edition of The Best Lawyers in America©, 7.4 million votes were analyzed. Lawyers are not required or allowed to pay a fee to be listed; therefore inclusion in Best Lawyers is considered a singular honor. Corporate Counsel magazine has called Best Lawyers “the most respected” referral list of attorneys in practice.