CHICAGO, July 30, 2024 — Barbara Wall, former chief legal officer and current member of the board of directors of Gannett Co., Inc., is a recipient of the 2024 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award.
Wall will receive the award, given annually by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, at a ceremony and reception from 3-5:30 p.m. CDT on Sunday, August 4, at the Swissotel Chicago during the ABA 2024 Annual Meeting.
In addition to Wall, the 2024 award recipients include Dolores Atencio, Pamila J. Brown, Estelle H. Rogers and Gina Shishima.
“We applaud the achievements of this amazing group of women, who have and will continue to inspire all of us in the legal profession including the next generation of women lawyers,” said Karol Corbin-Walker, chair of the Commission on Women in the Profession.
Wall currently serves on the board of directors of Gannett Co., Inc., having retired from the company in 2020 in the role of chief legal and operating officer. Wall is chair of the American Press Institute and sits on the boards of Freedom Forum, the News Media Alliance and Helen Keller International.
Wall has written and lectured on free speech issues, intellectual property rights and the legal issues associated with the digital transformation of the media industry.
Wall is past chair of the ABA Forum on Communications Law and founded the ABA Women in Communications Law Committee. In 2020, the ABA Forum on Communications Law honored her with its Champion of the First Amendment award. In 2021, she was the first woman to receive the Media Law Resource Center’s William J. Brennan Defense of Freedom Award.
Wall has taught media law as an adjunct professor at American University and George Washington University and served on the faculty of Practicing Law Institute’s Communications Law program for over 25 years. She earned a bachelor’s degree and law degree at the University of Virginia.
Click here for a photo of Barbara Wall.
The Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, established in 1991, honors outstanding women lawyers who have achieved professional excellence in their area of specialty and have actively paved the way to success for other women in the profession. The award is named for Margaret Brent, the first woman lawyer in America. Brent arrived in the colonies in 1638 and was involved in 124 court cases in more than eight years, winning every case.
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