Overview
EXCELLENCE IN ACTION
🏆 JULY 2026 WINNERS
★ Jesse Gallegos | Senior Counsel, Fires | Fearless
They have been key to several significant office accomplishments, earning trust through the quality of their work. As an “all-utility player,” they consistently exceed expectations on mission-critical projects and inspire those around them to do the same. Most recently, they helped address an important disciplinary board case before the New Mexico Supreme Court by organizing the response, reviewing materials, and ensuring a thorough, timely submission. Their contributions have also been invaluable in the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire case, where their diligent file review, client correspondence, FEMA accountability efforts, and issue spotting strengthened case development and client communication. They were also instrumental in evaluating, piloting, and rolling out our new case management system as we transition from Filevine.
★ Paola Lugo | Immigration Legal Assistant, Civil Rights | Excellence
They consistently embody the firm’s Excellence value through a work ethic that sets the standard for those around them, approaching every task with diligence, ownership, and a commitment to doing things right. Their customer service is exceptional: they treat clients and colleagues alike with care, responsiveness, and professionalism, ensuring everyone they work with feels supported. On top of that, they demonstrate natural leadership skills, stepping up to guide others and elevate the quality of the team’s work without ever being asked.
★ Matthew Ripley | Client Relations Manager, Fires | Collaboration
When our team was behind the 8-ball on a massive discovery project for a complex environmental litigation case, they stepped up to not only create an ingenious Formstack survey to send to our clients to make answering formal discovery less intimidating (in English and Spanish!), but they also created a merge template to make that survey seamlessly merge into our discovery responses and was with the team right up to the service deadline and beyond.
📊 JULY 2026 NOMINATION HIGHLIGHTS
Total Nominations: 26
Unique Nominees: 26
Departments Represented: Multiple
Nominations by Firm Value:
🤝 Collaboration | 14 nominations
⭐ Excellence | 10 nominations
💪 Fearless | 2 nominations
🌟 ALL JULY NOMINEES | THANK YOU!
COLLABORATION
• Matthew Ripley ★
• Elias Pena
• Peyton Fisk
• Katie Scavo
• Janice Murphy
• Chris McQueen
• Chandra Stanely
• Rebecca Whitby
• Martha Ponce
• Brendan McDonald
• Mackenzie Loving
• Isabella Lawrence
• Sarah Kelly
• Diane DeCarlo
EXCELLENCE
• Paola Lugo ★
• Sophie Nguyen
• Leslie Scott
• Taylor Carness
• Kathy Bailey
• Julian Valadez
• Denise Romero
• Lachmin Singh
• Alyson McClincy
• Angelina Trigueros
FEARLESS
• Jesse Gallegos ★
• Leilani Greene
