Three win ABA honors

Three California lawyers were honored last month by the American Bar Association for their professional excellence.

Barnes

Teveia Rose Barnes of San Francisco received a Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession for creating Lawyers for One America, where she serves as president and executive director. The award noted her organizational skills, commitment and passion to mobilize a disparate group of lawyers into a cohesive force.

The group was created in response to former President Bill Clinton’s call to action to lawyers to diversify their ranks and increase the amount of pro bono services to underserved communities, especially programs providing assistance aimed at ensuring economic self-sufficiency.

Barnes is the former executive director and general counsel of the Bar Association of San Francisco. She previously was a senior vice president of Bank of America.

The Margaret Brent Awards honor outstanding women lawyers who have achieved professional excellence in their area of specialty and have actively paved the way to success for others.

Mosten

Los Angeles lawyer Forrest “Woody” Mosten received the 2004 Lawyer as Problem Solver Award from the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution in recognition of his career as a mediator, developing a client library and pioneering the concept of unbundling legal services.

Mosten has participated in hundreds of disputes as a private and court-appointed mediator since 1979, and he established the Louis M. Brown Client Library, the first law firm library devoted to client-oriented resource materials related to alternative dispute resolution.

The Lawyer as Problem Solver Award recognizes extraordinary skill in either promoting the concept of the lawyer as problem solver or resolving individual, institutional or community problems in his or her capacity as a lawyer. Recipients are acknowledged for their use or promotion of collaboration, negotiation, mediation, decision-making and problem-solving skills to help parties resolve problems in a creative way.

Chugh

Navneet S. Chugh, managing partner of The Chugh Firm in Cerritos, received the Annual Bar Leader of the Year Award from the ABA General Practice and Small Firm Section.

The award recognizes the contributions of a bar leader who is or has been an officer of a general practice, solo and small firm entity, and who has made a difference through his leadership.

Chugh has extensive experience in a wide variety of corporate, transactional, taxation and mergers and acquisitions matters. He founded several bar associations and recently launched the International Indian Bar Association to provide a network for the 600,000 Indian lawyers around the world.