Sharon A. Fullmer Legal Aid Attorney of the Year Award

Established in February 1997, this award recognizes that legal services lawyer in Arizona whose service to low-income people encompasses both aggressive advocacy on behalf of individuals in extreme need as well as impact advocacy designed to address systemic issues affecting significant numbers of low-income people.

2024 Recipient

David J. Newstone is the Interim Executive Director and General Counsel of Defenders of Children, which has been providing free trauma-informed and healing-focused legal services to vulnerable low-income children and their families since 2007. Since moving to Arizona in 2012 to learn from and work with the faculty in the
Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona, David has demonstrated a tireless commitment to increasing access to justice within underserved and underrepresented communities throughout the state. Prior to joining Defenders of Children three years ago, David also practiced law in the public interest at Southern Arizona Legal Aid, Inc., and the William E. Morris Institute for Justice.

Throughout his legal career, David has successfully represented hundreds of low-income clients in counties and tribal nations across Arizona; contributed accessible legal content to numerous statewide programs and resources for self-represented litigants; and trained countless other attorneys, lay legal advocates, case managers, law enforcement officers, and others in crime victims’ rights and in family law, with a focus on child custody issues
and orders of protection.

David holds graduate degrees in law and political science from McGill University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Previous Recipients

The award has been presented to:

1997	Sharon A. Fullmer (posthumously)
1998	Lois T. Kermott (posthumously)
1999	William E. Morris
2000	Dolores H. Milkie
2001	Thomas J. Berning Edwad E. Coghlan
2002	Sylvia J. Struss
2003	Veronika Fabian Denise I. Young
2004	Lydia A. Glasson
2005	George H. McKay
2006	Patricia J. Gerrich
2007	Anthony L. Young
2008	Valerie C. Hink
2009	Rachel Wilson
2010	Prof. Andrew Silverman
2011	Pamela M. Bridge
2012	Mary V. Day
2013	Beverly B. Parker
2014	Ellen Sue Katz
2015	Laura Belous
2016	Stanley Silas
2017	Golden E. McCarthy
2018	Anne M. Ryan
2019	Deonissa Cañez-Anderson
2020	January F. E. Contreras Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project
2021	Jamie Balson
2022	Nina Targovnik
2023	Habib A. Pierce-Byrd
2024	David J. Newstone

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Sharon A. Fullmer Legal Aid Attorney of the Year Award

2024 Recipient

Previous Recipients

State Bar Annual Awards

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