Curtis Johnson named Outstanding Young Lawyer

Rochester attorney Curtis A. Johnson has been named 2017 Outstanding Young Lawyer by the New York State Bar Association.

“I’m extremely honored,” Johnson, 34, said in an interview at the offices of Bond Schoeneck & King PLLC, where he is a litigation associate.

“There are others from Rochester that have won it and they are all highly respected and well-known people,” he said.

Past recipients from Rochester include: U.S. District Court Judge Elizabeth Wolford, in 2003; 2001 winner Catherine Cerulli, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center and director of the Susan B. Anthony Center and the Laboratory of Interpersonal Violence and Victimization; 2013 recipient Jimmy M. Paulino II, partner at Goldberg Segalla; and Bradley Kammholz, partner at Kammholz Law PLLC, in 2002.

“I am extremely honored to be listed amongst them,” said Johnson, who was scheduled to be honored at a luncheon Wednesday in New York City during the annual meeting of the state Bar Association’s executive committee.

Finding solutions

Johnson’s nomination was coordinated and submitted by veteran attorney Justin L. Vigdor, of counsel at Bond Schoeneck & King.

The nomination included numerous supporting letters, including commendations from U.S. District Court Judge Frank P. Geraci Jr.; Monroe County Bar Association President Mark J. Moretti and Executive Director Kevin Ryan; and Pamela Reynolds, president of the Greater Rochester Association for Women Attorneys.

Johnson, a Chili native, earned his law degree at Albany Law School and was admitted to the Bar in 2008. He worked at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP in New York City until 2011.

From 2012 to 2015, Johnson was at Davidson Fink LLP in Rochester. He’s been at Bond Schoeneck & King PLLC since 2015.

“Probably as early as high school I knew I wanted to be a lawyer,” Johnson said.

“I was attracted to it because there’s an underpinning of the law in almost every part of society and in the lives of anyone and everyone,” he said.

Johnson said he gets the most enjoyment from work when he’s able to find a solution to a problem that others haven’t seen.

“I define success as coming up with the right resolution for your client that benefits them, that they’re agreeable to, and that is possible under the law,” he said.

As an undergraduate at the University at Albany, where he was a political science major, Johnson had a summer job with the Monroe County Public Defender’s Office that involved interviewing people at the jail to determine if they qualified to be represented by the Public Defender.

He said the experience was “eye opening.”

Finest traditions

“I quickly learned that the people that needed the most help are probably the people who have the least means,” Johnson said.

Now, Johnson contributes to Bond Schoeneck & King’s pro bono work with the Volunteer Legal Services Project representing grandparents in Family Court in custody cases.

“It’s extremely difficult, not just because the rights of grandparents are limited as compared to the rights of parents to get custody, but probably more so due to the fact that these grandparents and these children and these parents are all in terribly impossible situations,” he said.

Sometimes the cases involve drug-addicted parents, families in extreme poverty and children who are victims of abuse.

“It’s the kind of stuff that keeps you up at night more than your commercial cases, which also keep you up at night, but for different reasons,” Johnson said.

Since returning to Rochester from New York City, Johnson has been an active member of the Monroe County Bar Association, where he serves on the Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee and is the immediate past chair of the Young Lawyers Section.

He also is the founding chair of the Villa of Hope’s Young Professionals Board, and a member of the Corporate Development Committee of the Rochester chapter of American Diabetes Association’s Tour de Cure.

His extensive professional and community volunteer efforts have been recognized with the 2016 Monroe County Bar Association’s Emerging Bar Leader Award and The Daily Record’s Up & Coming Attorney Award.

“We believe he truly represents the type of young lawyer this award was intended to recognize, given Curtis’s clear commitment to the finest traditions of the Bar through his public and professional activities,” attorney Ryan McDonald, chair of the Monroe County Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Section, wrote in a letter supporting Johnson’s nomination.