Susan M. Finegan, Member of the Litigation Practice and Chair of the Pro Bono Committee of Mintz, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C., has been selected as a 2017 Pinnacle Award winner for outstanding achievement in the professions by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. 

The Pinnacle Awards honor eight leading women each year for outstanding achievement in the workplace, demonstrated leadership that has made a difference, and a commitment to enhance the quality of life in the region.

“This is a well-deserved honor for Sue,” said Robert I Bodian, Managing Member of Mintz. “Not only has Sue championed the firm’s pro bono efforts, but she has made an extraordinary impact in increasing access to legal services for low income people across the state of Massachusetts and beyond.”

Appointed as the firm’s first Pro Bono Partner in 2007, Ms. Finegan serves as lead counsel on numerous high-profile pro bono litigation matters, chairs the firm’s Pro Bono Committee, and oversees the firm’s 300+ pro bono matters. Over the past two decades, her pro bono experience has included sexual assault and domestic violence. She has represented hundreds of individual survivors and their families, advised domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers on a variety of legal matters, successfully advocated for the passage of a new restraining order law for sexual assault survivors, and drafted appellate and amicus briefs in state and federal appellate courts.  

Ms. Finegan is co-Chair of the Access to Justice Commission, a member and former Chair of the Supreme Judicial Court’s Standing Committee on Pro Bono Legal Services, and, until last month, Chair of the Commission on Judicial Conduct. She has created several new innovative statewide pro bono projects, including the Access to Justice Fellows Program for retired lawyers and the Massachusetts Civil Appellate Pro Bono Program. She has also been quite active in the community over the years on nonprofit boards and in alumni activities; she is currently President of the Dartmouth College Association of Alumni.

Following graduation from Boston College Law School, she served as a law clerk for the Honorable Andrew Caffrey at the United States District Court and for the Honorable Francis O’Connor at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.  In addition to her nearly two decades at Mintz, she served as legal director for the Victim Rights Law Center. She has received numerous other awards and recognitions, including the International Bar Association Pro Bono Award, Women’s Bar Association’s Lelia J. Robinson Award, the Top Women of Law/Circle of Excellence Award, the PAIR Project Outstanding Achievement Award, the Boston College Law School/Curtin Center Pro Bono Service Award, and the Dartmouth Alumni Award.  
 
Award recipients will be honored at the 2017 Pinnacle Awards ceremony taking place Friday, January 27, 2017 at the Marriott Copley Place Hotel in Boston.