Daniel J McAuliffe

Daniel J. McAuliffe was a distinguished trial attorney and a nationally respected authority on legal ethics and professionalism. Born in New York City on March 27, 1945, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Fordham University in 1966, majoring in Russian, and earned his law degree with honors from Harvard Law School in 1969. He began his career in Washington, serving in the Office of General Counsel at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, then as Counsel to the White House Committee on Education working on school desegregation, and in 1970 joined the United States Department of Justice as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General.

In 1973 McAuliffe joined the law firm of Snell & Wilmer, where he built a formidable reputation as a business litigator handling complex construction, finance, and antitrust matters, and briefed and argued numerous significant appeals, including an antitrust case before the United States Supreme Court. He was admitted to the State Bar of Nevada on October 4, 1993, as the firm expanded its regional practice. A tireless champion of law reform, legal ethics, and public access to justice, he chaired his firm's Ethics Committee for two decades and helped create the bar's Professionalism Course.

McAuliffe gave extraordinary service to the profession. He is the only Arizona lawyer to twice receive the State Bar's Member of the Year Award, in 1991 and 2009, served several terms on its Board of Governors, and led the State Bar of Arizona as president from July 2007 to June 2008. He received the Walter E. Craig Award for distinguished service in 2005, and in 2009 the State Bar of Arizona named its continuing legal education conference center in his honor. He died on March 12, 2010, at the age of 64, after a long battle with multiple myeloma, remembered by colleagues as a lawyer of rare intellect, integrity, and dedication.