Duane Morris Attorneys Receive Women’s Impact Network for Success Awards
The Duane Morris Women’s Impact Network for Success (WINS) has honored two attorneys for their efforts to advance women in the legal profession. Susan A. Laws, co-managing partner of the firm’s London office, received the Cheryl Bryson Leadership Award. Cyndie M. Chang, managing partner of the firm’s Los Angeles office, received the Margery Reed Professional Excellence Award.
Laws and Chang received the awards at a ceremony at Duane Morris’ annual firmwide meeting.
The Cheryl Bryson Leadership Award recognizes significant contributions, including professional development, leadership and mentoring, made by a lawyer to women in the legal profession. The award is named in honor of the late Cheryl Blackwell Bryson, a Duane Morris partner in Chicago who died in January 2012 after a long battle with cancer. Bryson was a leader in many significant civic and community causes, and she was repeatedly honored throughout her career as a major pioneer, both as a female lawyer and as a lawyer of color.
Likewise, Margery Reed spent her entire professional career as an attorney at Duane Morris, including 24 years as a partner of the firm. As demonstrated by her numerous awards, including her admission as a fellow in the prestigious American College of Bankruptcy, Reed was repeatedly recognized as one of the best commercial bankruptcy lawyers in the country. A consummate partner, Reed was incomparably selfless in giving of her time and talents to assist her colleagues and mentor junior lawyers. She was a true professional in every sense, and her unwavering commitment to her clients and colleagues, the firm and the profession of law is the reason this award for professional excellence is given in her name.
Susan A. Laws was one of the founders of the Duane Morris London Office in 2000. In the two decades that followed, she has been instrumental in recruiting and developing the firm’s London talent, including its women lawyers. Laws focuses her practice on business law and finance, mergers and acquisitions and venture capital financings—with an emphasis on cross border transactions. She has worked in-house in the engineering, automotive and insurance sectors as well as in private practice. Laws also serves on Duane Morris’ governing Partners Board and its Executive Committee. A frequent lecturer on the topic of mergers and acquisitions, she holds a master’s degree in business administration.
Laws is a graduate of Nottingham Law School (MBA, with distinction, 1997) and Southampton University (LLB, with honors, 1977) and was admitted to practice in England & Wales in 1980.
The firm said Cyndie M. Chang manages the firm’s Los Angeles office, maintains an active practice, is a community leader (including serving as a board member for the National Association of Women Lawyers, Duane Morris’ Partners Board, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, and as past president of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association) and still finds time to be a strong mentor to young lawyers. She litigates complex business, class action and commercial disputes involving contracts, products liability, product safety and recall, business torts and fraud, unfair competition, trademarks, trade secrets, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), California Proposition 65, entertainment and real estate. Chang litigates insurance-coverage issues on behalf of carriers, including significant environmental, asbestos, toxic tort, and commercial claims, as well as contribution and bad faith disputes. She also serves as one of 12 commissioners on the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession.
Chang was president of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Association, which awarded her its inaugural Trailblazer award. Loyola Law School, Los Angeles recognized her with the Board of Governors Grand Reunion alumni award. She’s received the “Super Lawyers” distinction, including Top 50 Women of Southern California and the Daily Journal’s Top 100 California Women Lawyers. Chang was selected as one of the “Most Influential Minority Lawyers” and “Leader in Law” by the Los Angeles Business Journal and honored with the inaugural Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) EDGE Greater Equality Award.
Chang is a graduate of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles (J.D., 2003), and Johns Hopkins University (B.A., with honors, 2000).
