The Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division The Lynn Futch Most Productive Young Lawyer Award Nomination Cover Sheet The Lynn Futch Most Productive Young Lawyer Award is given to a young lawyer who is not a member of The Florida Bar YLD Board of Governors, who has worked most diligently in the past year in Bar activities and/or law related public activities and who has an excellent reputation for legal abilities and integrity. Name of Nominee: Vanessa Snyder Nominee's Telephone: 305-215-4960 Nominee's Email: vanessa.snyder@usdoj.gov Nominee's Mailing Address:_United States Attorney s Office, 99 NE 4 th Street, Miami, FL 33132 Name of Nominator: Clayton Solomon Nominator's Telephone: 305-801-3665 Nominator's Email: clayton.solomon@gmail.com Attachments: It is mandatory to attach a letter or statement from the nominator explaining why the nominee deserves this award. It is optional to attach materials from third parties, such as photographs, articles, or additional letters in support. All Awards Applications are due by April 24, 2015 at 11:59 p.m. Email this cover form and all attachments as one PDF document to Awards Co-Chair Karen Persis at karen@karenpersis.com with a copy to tmiller@flabar.org.
The Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division Most Productive Young Lawyer Award Nomination Nominee: Vanessa S. Snyder 99 NE 4 th Street, Miami, FL 33132 Tel. (305) 215-4960
Vanessa Snyder is currently serving as an Assistant United States Attorney for the United States Attorney s Office for the Southern District of Florida, where she has served for the past two years. Previously, Vanessa served for one year as a law clerk to the Honorable Federico A. Moreno, Chief District Judge for the Southern District of Florida, and for one year as a law clerk to the Honorable Peter T. Fay, Senior Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to that, Vanessa worked in the private sector as an associate at Hogan Lovells. Vanessa is deserving of The Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division Most Productive Young Lawyer Award because of her contribution to the Bar, her professional achievements, and her contribution to her community. First, Vanessa has shown extraordinary commitment to the Bar through her contributions to the Federal Bar Association, South Florida Chapter, of which I am a member and serve on the Board of Directors. Years ago, as a junior associate in private practice, Vanessa joined the Chapter and immediately asked to be put to work. She became a committee member, then a committee chair, then a member of the Executive Board, and was most recently elected as an Officer, which places her in the executive ladder to later assume the role of President. She is one of the most active members of the Chapter s Executive Board and volunteers wherever she is needed, whether it is mentoring law students as part of our Chapter s law student initiative, writing articles for our chapter newsletter or for the national FBA magazine, or attending events as our chapter representative. She volunteers to mentor high school students and to participate in mock trials as part of the Federal Court s Law Day Celebration. And she spends countless hours organizing our Chapter s Annual Awards and Installation Dinner every year our premiere annual event, which features over 300 hundred guests, including numerous federal judges. In fact, last year, she was awarded the national Federal Bar Association Younger Federal Lawyers Award for her remarkable achievements and
contributions. In short, Vanessa is always enthusiastic about the FBA and its mission and is eager to work to help further its goals. Her contributions to our Chapter directly impact and benefit our local federal bar. There is no doubt she will lead the Chapter in the future and no doubt that she will ensure that it continues to grow and thrive. Her community activities notwithstanding, Vanessa is also deserving of this honor because of her legal abilities, work ethic and personal integrity. In her short time as an Assistant United States Attorney, Vanessa has significantly impacted the South Florida community through her hard work and dedication in prosecuting over 90 criminal defendants for various federal crimes an extraordinary caseload for even more senior attorneys. In just two years at the United States Attorney s Office, she prosecuted sixteen jury trials, including cases involving bank robbery, drug conspiracy, social security fraud, mail fraud, and child pornography. Vanessa has also made an impact in the United States Attorney s Office s mission to curtail violent crime. As a member of the Violence Reduction Partnership, Vanessa helps prosecute the most violent criminals in Miami s most crime-ridden communities. Her prosecution of these cases, which most often involve repeat offenders, has impacted those communities by reducing the amount of guns, narcotics, and gang violence in the area. In particular, Vanessa has made a significant impact in the area of stolen identity tax fraud. As part of the Stolen Identity Refund Fraud (SIRF) Strike Force, Vanessa prosecuted thirteen SIRF cases in the last year. The defendants she prosecuted this year stole thousands of identifies belonging to innocent victims and filed tax returns claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax refunds. She worked diligently with law enforcement to find and prosecute the sources of the stolen identities including individuals working for medical providers and for local schools as well as the users of the stolen identities. Those prosecutions resulted in
curtailing identity theft for the thousands of victims whose personal information was stolen, and the forfeiture of hundreds of thousands of dollars from fraudulent tax returns back to the IRS. Further, knowing Vanessa personally as I do, I can attest that in these and all cases she prosecutes, Vanessa is conscientious in exercising her prosecutorial discretion and in working with community partners to combat and prevent criminal activity. Prior to serving as an Assistant United States Attorney, Vanessa served as a law clerk for two years for both a Federal District Court Judge as well as for a Federal Appellate Court Judge. Through her service to the judiciary, she demonstrated her commitment to serving the federal government and the legal profession as a whole. She took great pride in her work and earned the admiration of both of her judges, as well as her peers, for the quality and thoroughness of her research and writing. Even while working in the private sector as an associate at Hogan Lovells, Vanessa demonstrated her commitment to the legal profession and her community by volunteering hundreds of hours each year to pro bono civil rights work. Through the Volunteer Lawyers Project, she took on cases for indigent and incarcerated individuals who needed representation to be able to bring their civil rights cases to the courtroom. For one incarcerated individual, Vanessa spent hundreds of volunteer hours over numerous years representing him in asserting police brutality claims. She litigated his claims in both the federal district and appellate courts until she succeeded in winning the case and changing the policies in the local law enforcement office where the incident occurred. For these and countless other reasons, Vanessa is a model young lawyer and is extremely deserving of the Most Productive Young Lawyer Award.