News Article
Womble Carlyle Attorneys Betty Quick, Jim Cooney Named Top Attorneys in N.C. by Best Lawyers
December 1, 2009
A prestigious independent publication has named Womble Carlyle attorneys Betty Quick and Jim Cooney the top attorneys for their practice area in their respective markets.
Quick was named the 2010 Trust & Estates Lawyer of the Year for the Triad (Greensboro/Winston-Salem, N.C.) market, while Cooney was named 2010 Bet-the-Company Litigation Lawyer of the Year for Charlotte. The honors are given by Best Lawyers, which publishes the annual Best Lawyers in America list. Only a single lawyer in each specialty in each community is being honored as the “Lawyer of the Year.”
“To have one attorney at the firm named the best in his or her field would be outstanding; to have two is absolutely tremendous,” said Womble Carlyle Managing Member Keith Vaughan. “Attorneys across the state and around the country consider Betty and Jim to be the very best, and we are proud they both call Womble Carlyle home.”
Steven Naifeh, Managing Editor of Best Lawyers, says, “We continue to believe – as we have believed for more than 25 years – that recognition by one’s peers is the most meaningful form of praise in the legal profession.”
Cooney and Quick are among 106 Womble Carlyle attorneys named to the 2010 list of The Best Lawyers in America.
Betty Quick specializes in estate planning, estate administration and charitable giving. Best Lawyers has recognized her as a leading trust and estates attorney in North Carolina in each of the past 20 years. Quick is the former President of the North Carolina Bar Association and is the Managing Member of Womble Carlyle’s Winston-Salem office.
Jim Cooney has litigated some of the most difficult and high-profile cases in North Carolina legal history, including successfully defending a wrongfully charged player in the Duke Lacrosse rape case. Cooney has tried more than 50 jury cases to verdict in civil and criminal cases and handled more than 30 appeals in the State and Federal courts. He has frequently ranked as a top civil and criminal defense attorney by numerous independent sources.
Best Lawyers compiles its lists of outstanding attorneys by conducting exhaustive peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers. The current, 16th edition of The Best Lawyers in America (2010), is based on more than 2.8 million detailed evaluations of lawyers by other lawyers. The lawyers being honored as “Lawyers of the Year” have received particularly high ratings in Best Lawyers’ surveys by earning a high level of respect among their peers for their abilities, professionalism, and integrity.