Snell & Wilmer recently announced Phoenix partner Heidi McNeil Staudenmaier was inducted into the Maricopa County Bar Association Hall of Fame during the annual awards dinner Nov. 14 at the Phoenix Country Club. The Hall of Fame was created in 2008 through the MCBA by then president Glenn Davis. It seeks to honor in perpetuity those remarkable individuals who have built the legal profession in Maricopa County and beyond; who have made extraordinary contributions to the law and justice; and who have distinguished themselves at the highest levels of public service. The Hall of Fame’s goal is also to preserve and foster the legal profession’s history in Maricopa County and to showcase the best and brightest lights to the larger community, according to a press release. The biographies and images of the inductees are displayed in the Maricopa County Justice Museum and Learning Center, housed on the sixth floor of the Historic Maricopa County Courthouse. Each spring, MCBA solicits nominations of worthy candidates from the legal community. A selection committee evaluates and selects inductees in June. Those selected are formally inducted at the MCBA Annual Meeting/Hall of Fame Luncheon in November. “It is such an honor and so humbling to be inducted into the MCBA Hall of Fame, particularly considering the luminaries of the Phoenix legal community who were prior inductees,” Ms. Staudenmaier said in a prepared statement. “In particular, I owe special thanks to John Bouma, my former firm partner and mentor who died tragically earlier this year in a car accident. John was a former MCBA President and encouraged me to get involved in the MCBA when I was a young associate at Snell & Wilmer. The MCBA provided me with so many excellent opportunities to promote the legal profession and community as a whole.” During Ms. Staudenmaier’s term as MCBA President (1999-2000), she accomplished much, including creation of the MCBA Task Force on the Recruitment and Retention of Women and Minority Lawyers, which advocated for diversification of the legal industry. She also initiated efforts to organize the “First One Hundred Women and Minorities Dinner.” This event highlighted retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as the keynote speaker, and recognized 100 pioneering women and minority lawyers in the Arizona legal profession. Ms. Staudenmaier has received other accolades in 2019, a release states. She was named to the inaugural class of Arizona Capitol Times’ Women Achievers of Arizona in the Legal Profession category. She was a finalist in the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce’s ATHENA awards for 2019. She was the 2019 recipient of the ABA’s prestigious Jean Allard Glass Cutter Award, which is presented annually to a woman who has cut through barriers to attain high accomplishment in business law, and she is the only Arizona attorney to ever receive this high honor. Ms. Staudenmaier was also the recipient of the University of Iowa College of Law’s 2019 Alumni Service Award. She is a member of the ABA Business Law Section’s Executive Council and recently served as only the second woman Chair of the Business and Corporate Litigation Committee. She is Past President (and only woman to date) of the International Masters of Gaming Law and Past Chair of the State Bar of Arizona Indian Law Section. A native of Iowa, she obtained her Juris Doctorate from the University of Iowa College of Law, where she served on the Law Foundation Board of Directors for 15 years. She earned dual Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Iowa. Ms. Staudenmaier is nationally recognized in the areas of Native American law, gaming law, and business litigation. She represents tribes, tribal entities and businesses that engage in commercial transactions with tribes and tribal entities. She has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America for many years, including being recognized as Phoenix Lawyer of the Year for Gaming Law (2011, 2016, 2018, 2020) and Phoenix Lawyer of the Year for Native American Law (2015, 2017).