assion is the path to excellence for several of this year’s Legal Elite.

“We love our work, we love the substance of what we do,” says John Kauffman, a partner with the Anchorage office of Stoel Rives LLP, which has twelve lawyers on the list of Alaska’s best lawyers, as nominated by their peers.

That kind of passion shapes how lawyers approach their work. “We spend a lot of time making sure that the attorneys in our office understand the context of a question that a client brings to us,” says Leslie Need, a partner at Landye Bennett Blumstein LLP, which has nineteen lawyers on the list.

At Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, the Anchorage office encourages passion for the work by giving associates “a good amount of responsibility” early in their careers, says Chris Slottee, a partner and co-leader of the firm’s Indian Country and Alaska Native corporations industry group. Schwabe, which has eleven people on the Legal Elite list, also gives its lawyers agency. “It lets you chart your own path… be master of your own destiny,” he says. “One thing Schwabe does well is empower its lawyers… to have the practice they want to have.”

Birch Horton Bittner & Cherot encourages its lawyers to pursue work that interests them, says one of its partners, Holly Wells. “We really encourage people to [do] training sessions or to expand their practice, explore their passions,” Wells says. The firm has twenty-one lawyers named to the Legal Elite for 2026.

Collegiality and a strong sense of teamwork also foster excellent work. Mike Schechter, a partner with Ashburn & Mason, says its hiring process includes what might be termed “the Alaska cabin test.” Legal work can involve long hours and close teamwork, so the firm, with seven entries in the Legal Elite, looks for people who will get along well with the rest of the team, especially in times of stress, as if they were snowbound in a cabin all winter.

Other firms echo this principle. People at Schwabe “like who they work with,” Slottee says, and, “Excellence… for us, is trying to be an excellent place to work—to be a law firm that people enjoy,” adds Wells.

The resulting cohesion contributes to a “collective focus,” says Laura Dulic Fisher, another Ashburn & Mason partner. “When one of us rises, we all rise. There’s a real group emphasis on turning out the very best product, finding the best solution for a client,” she says.

Teamwork extends beyond the office. “We genuinely like each other,” Kauffman says. “We enjoy each other’s company and we know each other’s families.” For example, when a Stoel Rives partner’s band plays gigs around town, Kauffman says others from work always show up to support him.

Collegiality also tends to create long tenure. All those interviewed say people at their offices tend to stick around. Multiple firms among the Legal Elite have lawyers who’ve either been there ten-plus years or are partners who started as associates. If people leave, it might be for a judgeship or other public service, as did Ashburn & Mason alumna Eva Gardner, now municipal attorney for Anchorage.

Lawyers who mesh without aggravating each other’s cabin fever help propel each other to excellence.

Alaska firms known for excellence tend to emphasize development of younger attorneys. Kauffman says Stoel Rives’ senior lawyers are dedicated to training less-experienced colleagues, which provides “opportunities to basically expand a lawyer’s role as much as they’re able, as soon as they’re able.” The firm operates on the principal that the best way to learn is by doing, so Kauffman says the team works to ensure it’s “not just keeping our junior folks in the background while” senior folks handle the substantive work. Younger lawyers there get chances to join client meetings and draft documents. The firm also gives them good oversight and guidance, Kauffman says.

“Once they’re here, we do our best to support ‘em,” Slottee says of Schwabe. That includes giving people good clients and interesting projects and helping them build something that’s actually theirs, he says, adding: “They’re not just a cog in a machine.”

Schwabe also spends a lot of time training its new lawyers on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Alaska Native law can differ significantly from tribal law in the Lower 48, Slottee says. And ANCSA rarely gets much coverage in US law schools. Professors at Lower 48 schools—“which is all of them” Slottee observes—are more likely to cover ANCSA as part of a broader course rather than devote an entire class to it.

Schwabe specifically recruits lawyers for the Indian Country and Alaska Native corporations industry group Slottee leads, so the firm provides significant training on ANCSA’s legal nuances.

Developing employees can also include helping people avoid burnout. “The legal industry as a whole struggles with self care,” says Birch Horton Bittner & Cherot partner Jason Brandeis. To address that, he says managers try to keep an eye on people’s workloads to help ensure they haven’t taken on too much. During winter months, they might try to plan team activities with a view to the challenges of short days and seasonal affective disorder. And when people take time off, “we try to cover for each other” so people don’t come back to “three times as much work to do because you’ve been out of the office,” Brandeis says.

Stoel Rives takes a slightly different approach to employee health, Kauffman says. “We’re not looking for balance per se,” but the firm also wants its employees “to do other meaningful things with our lives.” When a project ends or lawyers have breaks in the work, “We really all encourage each other to pursue other activities outside of work.” The high school track and cross country teams that Kauffman coaches provide a good analogy: “You can’t go hard seven days a week,” he says of running. The same applies to legal work.

Stoel Rives’ sabbatical program helps reinforce this. When lawyers have been there ten years, they get a three-month sabbatical. Kauffman, for example, took his family to Spain. After that first sabbatical, lawyers get another one of two to three months every five years. Taking those breaks means “you’re ultimately a better lawyer long-term,” Kauffman says.

Alaska’s lack of a law school means firms must work harder at finding new lawyers. “That is one of the unique challenges of recruitment in a state like Alaska,” says Dulic Fisher. The various firms take a slightly different approach to this.

“Our approach to recruitment is very similar to how new clients find us,” says Need. Landye Bennett Blumstein’s reputation drives a lot of word-of-mouth referrals, so Need finds, “A lot of our recruitment is pretty organic.”

Birch Horton Bittner & Cherot seeks to maintain a strong presence in the legal community, Brandeis says. This includes volunteering, involvement with Bar Association events for young lawyers, and other ways to “build those relationships outside of the traditional law school context,” he says.

Multiple firms say the Alaska Court System’s robust clerkship program also plays a key role in recruitment. “Everybody understands this problem: people at the bench, the judges, the Bar Association,” says Schechter. “Folks who are doing good, high-level legal work in the state know this problem really well,” says Schechter. He says those involved with running the clerkship program try to “get people out and doing Alaska things.”

“A lot of really talented lawyers come up here” thinking it’s for a year, says Dulic Fisher, “and then they love it and they stay and they realize what a great place it is.” Indeed, she came to Alaska through a clerkship.

Schechter’s wife did one clerkship in Alaska, worked a few years in New York, and then did a second Alaska clerkship, after which she stayed. The year she clerked in Juneau, Schechter says all the Alaska Supreme Court clerks went to Nome after the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race to participate in the Businessman’s Race. The fundraiser, organized by the Nome Kennel Club, let participants race a small sled dog team over a short distance. “They’re really trying to sell Alaska,” Schechter says of the clerkship program.

Brandeis says the state also offers unique areas of practice that can attract attorneys. “Given the geography and the industries here, there are some uniquely Alaskan areas of legal practice,” he says, citing commercial fishing, environmental law, and oil and gas. Alaska was also one of the first states in which marijuana law was pioneered, and the state has unique campaign finance disclosure requirements. “We give people the opportunity to work on these unique Alaska things,” he says.

Attention to excellence thus benefits the entire profession by strengthening Alaska’s appeal to lawyers from across the country.