Dallas Bar Association names Cheryl Wattley as Trial Lawyer of the Year

The Dallas Bar Association named Cheryl Wattley as the recipient of the 2021 Outstanding Trial Lawyer of the Year Award, to be presented at the DBA’s Bench Bar Conference in Horseshoe Bay on November 4.

The award is given annually to the DBA member who best exemplifies the noble principles of the legal profession.

Wattley, a professor at UNT Dallas College of Law, worked with non-governmental organizations through the International Human Rights Clinic to provide shadow reports in relation to countries’ mandatory human rights reports to the United Nations. The work of her students contributed to an amendment to a Central American country’s education statutes to remove corporal punishment for indigenous students as allowable discipline.

Wattley also does pro bono work with Centurion Ministries, a nonprofit dedicated to the vindication of the wrongly convicted, which led to the recent release of Benjamine Spencer after 34 years in a Texas penitentiary.

For more information about the Dallas Bar Association, go to dallasbar.org.