Pa. Superior Court Judge, area attorney to be honored at Bar Association awards banquet

Two area legal professionals will find themselves at the center of an upcoming awards ceremony designed to highlight the good deeds of women in the workplace.

The Pennsylvania Bar Association recently announced that its Commission on Women in the Profession will present its annual Anne X. Alpern Award to Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge Susan Peikes Gantman and its Lynette Norton Award to Mary Cushing Doherty, an attorney with the Norristown, Pa.-based law firm High Swartz LLP.

The two women will officially be presented with their awards during the association’s 19^th annual conference on May 9 titled “Growing Outside Your Practice – Options, Opportunities and Ethical Issues.”

The event will take place at the Marriott Lancaster at Penn Square in Lancaster, Pa.

The Alpern Award, established in 1994 in honor of Anne X. Alpern, who served as Pennsylvania attorney general in 1959 and the first woman state attorney general in the nation’s history, is given out each year to a female attorney or jurist who “demonstrates excellence in the legal profession and who makes a significant professional impact on women in the law,” according to a Pennsylvania Bar Association news release announcing the upcoming awards banquet.

Gantman, who has served as an appellate judge on Pennsylvania’s Superior Court since 2004, previously served as co-chair of the Family Law Section at Cozen O’Connor’s West Conshohocken, Pa. office and as partner and chair of the Domestic Relations Section at the West Conshohocken firm Sherr, Joffe & Zukerman, according to the bar association.

Gantman worked in private practice in Norristown, Pa. from the early 1980s until the early 1990s, and also has served as the solicitor for the Montgomery County Office of Children and Youth and for Montgomery County Housing and Community Development.

Additionally, Gantman has worked as an assistant district attorney for the major crimes unit in the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.

Gantman has long been an advocate of children and other abuse victims, according to the bar association. She has lectured in front of, and has been an instructor for the Pennsylvania State Police Academy, the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare, the Pennsylvania Bar Institute and the Montgomery Bar Association.

Gantman, who formerly served as a board member for Women of Vision, the Federation of Allied Jewish Appeal and Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, was also a member of the Domestic Violence Legal Network and was a coordinator with Children First, a Montgomery County parenting seminar.

Gantman has received other accolades and awards relating to her work throughout the years.

The Norton Award was created to honor the memory of Lynette Norton, a founding member of the bar association’s Commission on Women in the Profession.

Norton, who passed away in 2002, was a women’s advocate and worked to promote women’s rights, according to the bar association.

Doherty, who began her legal career in 1979 as an associate with the Philadelphia firm Abrahams & Loewenstein, has worked in private practice and as special counsel for Abrahams & Loewenstein.

She has been a partner at High Swartz since 1999.

Doherty has been a fellow at the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, she has chaired the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Family Law Section, and she has been active with the Philadelphia Bar Association, the American Bar Association and the American Bar Foundation.

Doherty has been involved with the Joint Pennsylvania State Government Commission’s Advisory Committee on Domestic Relations Law and the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproduction Technologies.

She has also lectured for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and both Villanova University’s School of Law and Widener University’s School of Law.

Doherty also has been recognized for her works through other past awards and accolades.

To learn more about the upcoming ceremony, visit www.pabar.org.