NEW ORLEANS – Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann L.L.C. announced that member Wayne Lee received the Greater New Orleans Louis A. Martinet Legal Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award on Sep. 14, during the organization’s annual scholarship and jazz brunch.
According to a press release, the brunch raises funds to provide scholarships to law students and pre-law students, as well as funding for various community service projects. The Martinet Society is named in honor of Louis A. Martinet, an African American lawyer who was a key figure during the civil rights efforts surrounding the end of Reconstruction. The Martinet Society began during the midst of the civil rights struggle with the objectives of encouraging the interchange of ideas, promoting legal scholarship and the administration of justice.
Throughout his career, Lee, a 45-year veteran of Stone Pigman, has shown genuine commitment and leadership to make the legal community more diverse and inclusive. Lee was elected as the first African American President of the Louisiana State Bar Association (LSBA) and is a recent honoree of the Committee on Diversity in the Legal Profession Award. He received the honor at the LSBA’s 12th Annual Conclave on Diversity in the Legal Profession, an event he played a leading role in founding.
Throughout the years, Lee and Stone Pigman have hosted diversity receptions for first-year law students. At those events, students have been introduced to a wider community of diverse judges and attorneys. Lee has served as a trusted mentor and confidante to countless diverse attorneys over the course of decades and has instilled the ingredients for success in young professionals, now making their own mark in the legal community.
Lee received the LSBA President’s Award in 1993, 1998 and 2010. He has also been named to The Best Lawyers in America in five different fields and has been named to Chambers U.S.A. America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in the field of general commercial litigation and to Louisiana Super Lawyers. Lee was honored as the 2006 Louisiana Bar Foundation’s Board of Directors’ Distinguished Attorney in Louisiana, was inducted into the Tulane Law School Hall of Fame in 2013 as a member of the inaugural class, and, in 2018, was inducted as a member of the National Bar Association Hall of Fame.
Most recently, Lee was selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2019 edition of Best Lawyers in America. Lee was recognized for: Antitrust Litigation; Bet-the-Company Litigation; Commercial Litigation; Insurance Law; and Personal Injury Litigation – Defendants.
A graduate of the Tulane University Law School Class of 1974, he was chosen to the Order of the Coif and as a member of the Tulane Law Review Board of Editors. He received his undergraduate degree from Tulane in 1971.
