Content area
Full Text
Four West Virginia lawyers have been listed as Best Lawyers' Lawyers of the Year for 2009.
The state's four Best Lawyers of the year are Louis Southworth II, corporate law; Carl Andrews, real estate law; Thomas Flaherty, personal injury litigation, defendants; and Sandra Murphy, banking law.
This is the 15th edition of The Best Lawyers in America, a peer-review publication in the legal profession, according to a news release.
The current edition is based on more than 2.5 million detailed evaluations of lawyers by other lawyers. The lawyers being honored as 2009 Lawyers of the Year have received particularly high ratings, according to the Best Lawyers Web site.
The Lawyers of the Year awardees are in high-profile legal areas in large legal communities. The focus areas are banking law, bet-the-company litigation, corporate law, family law, personal injury litigation and real estate law. A single lawyer in each area per community is listed as a "lawyer of the Year."
Louis Southworth II
Jackson Kelly attorney Louis Southworth II has been with the firm in Charleston since 1968 and worked two summers previously at the firm.
"In other words, my whole life," he said, joking. "I'm very prejudiced and believe staying with one firm is preferable, so I don't see any advantages to jumping around."
He focuses his law practice on administrative, business and commercial, business planning, leases, legislative services, mergers and acquisitions, securities and corporate law. He also is actively involved with the American and West Virginia Bar Associations and is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel, according to a news release.
Southworth said his success comes from a combination of his tax background and the opportunity through the firm to gain clients. The firm sent him to New York University School of Law in 1969 for tax specialization, where he graduated with an LLM in taxation in 1970.
"Then, as is true with most tax lawyers, you very soon graduate into the corporate area, especially mergers acid acquisitions," he said.
He also is a trustee of many professional and civic associations and serves numerous organizations, such...