This year’s Professional Excellence honors, recognizing fine work done in 2017 and in some cases well before that, look a bit different from years past. In addition to the Attorney of the Year, Lifetime Achievement and New Leaders of the Bar honors that have proven meaningful to the recipients, the Law Journal and the readers alike, this year we set out to spotlight excellence in transactional practices through our Dealmakers of the Year honor. And our inaugural Mentors honor sought to recognize attorneys for doing an often unheralded but always vital job: guiding younger generations of lawyers to achieve professional excellence themselves.

In the Q&A profiles here, the honorees kindly shared their insights on a variety of topics. We thank them for taking the time to do so—time is precious for busy practitioners such as these—and we hope you’ll find these insights as engaging as we have.