The American Bar Association Solo, Small Firm, and General Practice Division will present several awards from 12:45 to 1:45 p.m. CDT Friday, August 6, at a virtual award presentation during the 2021 ABA Hybrid Annual Meeting.
Those being honored include:
• Maryellen Cuthbert of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, with the 2021 Solo and Small Firm Trainer Award, which recognizes lawyers who have made significant contributions to educating lawyers or law students regarding the opportunities and challenges of a solo and small firm practice.
• Andrés W. López with the 2021 Solo and Small Firm Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes the efforts and accomplishments of outstanding solo and small firm practitioners as well as bar leaders and associations.
• Anthony C. Musto with the 2021 Solo and Small Firm Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes the efforts and accomplishments of outstanding solo and small firm practitioners as well as bar leaders and associations.
As private and appointed counsel, Cuthbert has represented juveniles and adult defendants in Massachusetts for over 30 years. As a juvenile supervising attorney, she provides training and mentoring for juvenile trial attorneys. Although her law practice is focused on juveniles and youthful offenders, she also has an extensive criminal practice in Massachusetts Superior Court.
Cuthbert’s work requires expertise in school law issues, child requiring assistance petitions along with care and protection matters. She is a past recipient of the Jay Blitzman Youth Advocacy Award and was named the 2018 Massachusetts Bar Association Access to Justice Defender of the year. She is a graduate of Manhattanville College, attended Franklin Pierce Law Center and Boston University School of Law, receiving her law degree in 1983.
López is the president of The Law Offices of Andrés W. López P.S.C. He represents plaintiffs and defendants in complex civil litigation. Before starting his own firm, López served as a law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr., District of Massachusetts, and for U.S. District Court Judge Jay A. Garcia-Gregory, District of Puerto Rico. He also worked in the litigation departments of two big law firms in Boston and San Juan.
For more than 25 years, López has worked on cases encompassing a broad range of substantive areas, such as constitutional law, products liability, securities and antitrust. He also has considerable experience in class actions and multidistrict litigation. López is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
He has served on numerous boards and volunteer positions, both in the legal profession and in the community at large. He served on President Barack Obama’s National Finance Committee during both of his presidential campaigns. During Obama’s reelection campaign, López was National Chairman of the Futuro Fund, an entity that broke all previous records for Latino presidential campaign fundraising and shattered stereotypes about the financial strength of Latinos in America. López has twice served as a presidential appointee, most recently as a member of the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees. Previously, he served on a presidential commission tasked with creating a feasibility report on the creation of a Smithsonian American Latino Museum on the National Mall.
López has received numerous recognitions for his work, including as one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the United States, the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Pro Bono Attorney of the Year Award, and Hispanic VIP’s Man of the Year award. He also served in numerous roles in the Federal Bar Association, including as president of the FBA’s Puerto Rico chapter.
López also served on the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, and as a co-chair of the DNC’s Credentials Committee. He previously served as chairman of the Harvard Law School Latino Alumni Committee, and in that capacity led HLS’s Celebration of Latino Alumni. López is a founder of the Harvard Latino Law Review. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Musto has a primarily appellate practice in Hallandale Beach, Florida. He is an adjunct professor of law at St. Thomas University School of Law, where he taught full time for 11 years. Musto is a fellow of both the American Bar Foundation and the Florida Bar Foundation, a member of the ABA Senior Lawyer Division Council and a co-executive director of the ABA Criminal Justice Section Specialized Practice Division.
He has served as president of Florida Legal Services Inc., was a member of the board of directors of the Florida Bar Foundation, and was a member of the ABA Commission on Youth at Risk, Standing Committee on Professionalism and Criminal Justice Section council. He was also a member of the Supreme Court of Florida Commission on Professionalism and the Committee on Standard Jury Instructions in Criminal Cases. He is a past chair of the appellate practice, criminal law, government lawyer and public interest law sections of The Florida Bar, the bar’s council of sections, the Florida Criminal Procedure Rules Committee and the Florida Rules of Judicial Administration Committee.
Musto is a former city commissioner for the City of Hallandale Beach, was chief counsel of the Florida attorney general’s Miami office, and was chief appellate counsel of the Broward County Attorney’s Office.
Musto organized the first national conference on professionalism for government lawyers, establishing statewide pro bono programs to provide representation for children aging out of foster care and for human trafficking victims seeking sealing or expunction of criminal records. He wrote, submitted and successfully argued in favor of the rule adopted by the Supreme Court of Florida requiring the use of recycled paper for documents filed in the state court system, a rule that resulted in the saving of an estimated 850,000 trees annually.
In addition, Musto developed and coordinated the Broward County Attorney’s Office pro bono program, which became a model for public agencies throughout the nation and received ABA Pro Bono Publico Award and the Supreme Court of Florida Chief Justice’s Law Firm Commendation. Musto also is president of the Hallandale Symphonic Pops Orchestra.
With more than 10,000 members, the ABA Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division is committed to providing unique resources exclusively for solo, small-firm and general practitioners, who represent half of the nation’s lawyers.
