PETA Wins “Best Legal Departments 2017” Honors

When Greg and I started becoming active supporters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), their legal team members particularly impressed us with their creativity, compassion, and courage.  Through the Gregory J. Reiter Memorial Fund, I have continued to contribute financially to support the work of PETA’s legal department.

I am therefore extraordinarily proud to learn that Corporate Counsel magazine just named the PETA legal department as one of four winners of its “Best Legal Departments 2017” honors, for the “tough legal minds that have fundamentally shifted the animal law landscape in this country.”  Citing PETA legal work that led to historic decisions on orcas and circuses as well as “more than a dozen other significant developments in animal law and cutting-edge animal-free science,” Corporate Counsel is honoring PETA’s legal team alongside the legal departments of Clorox, First Data and IBM.  PETA is only the second nonprofit and the first animal protection organization to receive this annual award that launched in 2006.

From the article:

“I’ve worked for a lot of major movements, and the animal rights people are the nicest,” says PETA’s chief outside counsel, Phil Hirschkop, the famous longtime civil rights litigator perhaps best known as one of the attorneys who successfully defended the Loving couple in its landmark 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage.

“They care about animals, but they care about people, too.”

PETA’s legal team will be honored at The American Lawyer Lifetime Awards reception in New York on October 24 (which just happens to be Greg’s and my 25th wedding anniversary).

~Alysoun