On February 9, 2007, the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division will award the first ever ABA YLD National Outstanding Young Lawyer Award to Sean D. Reyes of Salt Lake City, Utah. “We are thrilled to honor Mr. Reyes,” explains Jay E. Ray, Immediate Past Chair of the ABA YLD. According to Mr. Ray, “Sean is exactly the type of young lawyer the award was created to recognize—one who exhibits professional excellence, service to the profession and the bar, service to the community, and has a reputation for legal ethics and professional responsibility.”

Mr. Reyes was born and raised in Southern California. His father, of Spanish and Filipino descent, immigrated to the United States, battled for citizenship and rose to national acclaim as an artist before launching a successful career as a movie producer and entrepreneur. His mother, of Japanese and Native Hawaiian heritage, was a teacher, administrator and principal during her forty years in the Los Angeles public school system.

Mr. Reyes was an accomplished athlete recruited for college sports. After serving on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the inner-city of Chicago, Mr. Reyes graduated summa cum laude in 1994 from Brigham Young University with a degree in English. He immediately enrolled in law school at the University of California at Berkeley. While there, Mr. Reyes played for the Cal Men’s Volleyball team before getting married as a 2L. He earned a JD in 1997 with honors in several classes. Mr. Reyes has been married for twelve years to his “beautiful and patient wife,” Saysha. They have five children: Kai, Samuel, Kalia, Aidan and Kenoa.

Professional Experience
Mr. Reyes was admitted to the Utah State Bar in 1997 and began practicing at Utah’s largest law firm, Parsons Behle & Latimer. In 2004 Mr. Reyes became one of the first minority lawyers to make partner at a major firm in Utah. Mr. Reyes’ practice centers on complex commercial litigation, with substantial experience in tort, first amendment, environmental and employment law.; He has argued or briefed cases that have gone to the Utah Supreme Court, 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the US Supreme Court. He has first chaired trials and won numerous cases for his clients. Mr. Reyes is an active member of the firm’s recruiting committee and formerly co-chaired the firm’s associate relations committee. Mr. Reyes is a frequent lecturer and presenter on a variety of legal and business topics. He has also served as a small claims judge pro tem for several years.

Mr. Reyes has been named one of Utah’s Legal Elite each year since 2005, was recognized as one of the Forty Most Influential Businesspersons Under Forty by the Utah Business Magazine in 2006 and was selected as the Utah State Bar’s Young Lawyer of the Year in 2006. In 2007, Mr. Reyes was appointed by Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. to serve on the Judicial Nominating Committee for the state’s most populous district. He is one of the youngest lawyers to ever serve on this important and influential body. Mr. Reyes’ nomination for the ABA YLD National Outstanding Young Lawyer Award was supported by Governor Huntsman and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Utah, Christine M. Durham. Chief Justice Durham describes Mr. Reyes as being a “remarkable person who is using his extraordinary gifts to serve his profession and his community.” This comment is echoed by Ross McPhail, an attorney against whom Mr. Reyes litigated, who declared that “should I ever need an attorney—or a friend—Sean would be the first name on my list.”

Service to the Bar
Mr. Reyes has been extremely active in the Utah bar. Nathan D. Alder, President-Elect of the Utah State Bar, describes him as being “one of the finest lawyers you will ever meet” and as being “among the most liked and most admired people I know.”

From 2004 to 2005 Mr. Reyes was President of the Utah Minority Bar Association (UMBA), an organization for which he provided great visibility and leadership. As an officer, he was instrumental in helping UMBA convince many of Utah’s legal employers to sign a Pledge to Racial and Ethnic Diversity. Under his care, UMBA continues its outreach to bring together minority communities with judges, practitioners, and legal services, as well as to lobby state government for diversity in the legal field. During his term as President, UMBA raised over $120,000 to recognize pioneering minority lawyers and to fund scholarship awards for minority students through an event celebrating the first fifty minority lawyers in Utah. UMBA also sponsored a first-of-a-kind reception for minority lawyers from across the country when Utah hosted the ABA Midyear Meeting in 2005. Due in part to the many programs and services Mr. Reyes implemented or expanded, UMBA was chosen to receive a distinguished service award from the Utah State Bar and the ABA Partnership Award—the first such awards for the organization.

Mr. Reyes has also served as a committee chair, officer and member of the Executive Council for the Utah State Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.  From 2004-07 Mr. Reyes served as the Utah YLD’s Treasurer.  Mr. Reyes has represented the Utah YLD as a delegate to the ABA YLD Assembly and served as a Liaison to the Utah Supreme Court’s Committee on Standards and Professionalism.  He has also been involved in countless volunteer endeavors, including many community education and service projects.  He has taught junior high and high school students about the judicial process, offered free legal direction at the Tuesday Night Bar, raised money for pro bono legal services through the And Justice for All campaign, collected business clothes for unemployed persons to wear during job interviews, and participated in many other service efforts.  Mr. Reyes has also served twice as an ex-officio member of the Utah State Bar Commission, the governing body of the Utah bar.

Mr. Reyes’ involvement in the bar has earned him many friends and admirers. David Hall, the Immediate Past President of the Utah YLD describes Mr. Reyes as exemplifying “everything that is good about the legal profession. In a profession that is often criticized for its greed and lack of civility, Sean has achieved success and admiration through service to others.”  Mr. Hall says that Mr. Reyes has been a true friend to him and reports that, shortly before I began my term as President of the Utah Young Lawyers Division, my wife was diagnosed with cancer while she was pregnant with our daughter. The burdens of being President of the Utah YLD and being an associate at a large law firm are by themselves daunting, but to do so while my wife was going through chemotherapy and my daughter was in the NICU would not have been possible if it was not for Sean’s compassion and assistance. Sean stepped in, on numerous occasions and with very little notice, to cover my responsibilities as YLD President and to make sure the Utah YLD continued to function smoothly.

Service to the Community
One of Mr. Reyes’ true passions is working with minority high school, college, and law students, which is evidenced by the numerous hours he dedicates to mentoring and counseling them. The President of the Minority Law Student Association at J. Reuben Clark Law School said about Mr. Reyes, “looking in my inbox, I can find almost fifteen emails from Sean where he is inviting students to events or offering assistance and mentoring to them. Sean is such a nice and inviting personality that many students feel so comfortable with him they bombard him with emails and phone calls asking advice about every possible topics. Sean always takes the time to respond—even when he does not know the student.”

Mr. Reyes dedicates countless hours assisting in supervising volunteers for the LDS Church who have taught English to thousands of immigrants in the Salt Lake City and surrounding areas. Previously, he helped institute a variety of community programs that drew together persons of all faiths and walks of life. These included a clothing exchange for impoverished immigrants, community English classes, workshops on topics such as budgeting, home repair, acting, emergency preparedness and self defense, as well as a community breakfast to honor veterans.  He has been a basketball coach and a Boy Scout leader in his neighborhood. For several years as an associate, and while attempting to make partner at his firm, Mr. Reyes served as a counselor and then bishop for his LDS congregation (similar to a pastor or priest) in a very transient downtown area, dedicating up to thirty hours a week visiting, counseling and providing spiritual guidance to parishioners, running the various operations of his LDS ward and performing weddings, funerals, baby blessings and baptisms in the neighborhood.

Mr. Reyes also devotes hundreds of hours to community organizations and individuals. He is an advisory board member of the Asian Chamber of Commerce and has served on the board of directors of the Utah Hispanic Chamber of Commerce since 2001. He has served as an executive officer of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and helped it grow from less than thirty members in 2001 to over 300 members today, with numerous corporate sponsors and nationwide prominence.

Mr. Reyes is also a founding member, board member, and Vice-President of the Utah Hispanic Business Leadership/Education Foundation, which awards numerous scholarships to Hispanic college and trade school students each year. He is a member of the Utah Republican Hispanic Assembly and sits on the Utah Hispanic Latino Legislative Taskforce, which is comprised of some of the most influential political, community and business leaders in the Hispanic community. His advocacy and hard work for the Taskforce have earned him respect from legislators regardless of party affiliation.

In addition, Mr. Reyes co-owns a small business that publishes Nuestra Gente Utah, a bilingual Hispanic family magazine. He also mentors other small business owners in the minority community, including establishing a mentoring program called ACCESO that provides opportunities for minority small businesses to meet with successful business leaders on a monthly basis. Because of his expertise on minority issues in Utah, Mr. Reyes has appeared on Spanish and English-language television and in other media. He sits on an advisory panel for the Salt Lake Tribune and on the editorial board of Connect, a major local business magazine.

Finally, Mr. Reyes is dedicated to providing legal services to those who cannot afford them. Each year he provides fifty to one hundred hours of pro bono legal services to individuals relating to landlord-tenant, immigrant, and debt relief issues. In addition, he performs fifty to one hundred hours of pro bono legal services on cases coming through UMBA and through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also provides hundreds of hours a year in free legal services to the Utah Hispanic and Asian Chambers of Commerce, the Utah Business Leadership/Education Foundation, and the Asian Association of Utah.

The ABA YLD is proud to recognize Sean D. Reyes as the first ABA YLD National Outstanding Young Lawyer Award recipient and as a true inspiration and role model for all lawyers.