Maurice Weigle Exceptional Young Lawyer Award

2025 – Missy Turk Firmage

Just eight years into her legal career, Missy Turk Firmage already has made a mark on our profession and our community that most lawyers would be proud of at the end of their careers. Missy has built a successful fiduciary probate litigation and administration practice as Principal at Chuhak & Tecson, PC while prioritizing pro bono work and service to the bar and our community.

From her start as a lawyer, Missy has consistently demonstrated leadership and service to the bar. Active in the Chicago Bar Association, Missy recently served as the legislative liaison of the Mental Health and Disability Law Committee and chaired the Probate Practice Committee from 2020 to 2021 having also served as the vice chair. Within her firm, Missy dedicates countless hours to mentoring younger attorneys, focusing on instilling the importance of integrity in the profession. She was also recently appointed as her firm’s first Pro Bono Publico Chairperson.

2024 – Jenna Stupar

Jenna Stupar has already amassed an impressive record of pro bono and service to our profession and community in her early years of practice that most lawyers who have practiced for decades would be hard-pressed to match.

Jenna has a particular passion for advocating on behalf of women who have survived violence and have been failed by the criminal justice system that began early in her legal career when she interned at the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation for a summer during law school.

After graduating as the valedictorian of her class at DePaul University College of Law, Jenna carried that passion into a diverse and active pro bono practice in her current role as a Partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

2023 – Whitney K. Siehl

Whitney K. Siehl has been passionate about advocating for women’s rights since middle school when she wrote a contest-winning essay advocating for increased legal protections for women. Currently a plaintiffs’ litigator at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, LLP, she handles class action lawsuits of various types, with a particular focus on sexual assault and harassment cases. Though Whitney is still early in her career, she already has made her mark advancing justice for women and has done extensive pro bono work in this area.

2022 – Patrick Yingling

Patrick Yingling is a partner at Reed Smith LLP. Incredibly, in addition to a busy practice at the firm, he has dedicated an average of more than 750 hours each year to pro bono cases that advance justice, equity, and the rule of law.

Patrick has obtained landmark wins for LGBTQ+ rights, including court recognition of same-sex common-law marriages dating back decades and rulings invalidating laws that prevented transgender individuals from changing their names.

2021 – Sarah Grady

Despite being a relatively new lawyer, Sarah Grady has already made an enormous impact within the legal community. Sarah leads the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the law firm of Loevy & Loevy, where she has worked since 2013. Throughout her time in the legal field, she has showed an impressive dedication to public interest and justice, with a focus on prisoners’ rights that she traces back to a class she took at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law. Throughout law school she sought out every opportunity she could to dedicate herself to public interest; she worked at the MacArthur Justice Center and the Death Penalty Clinic at Northwestern University School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, and also helped organize the Student Funded Public Interest Fellowship program.

2020 – Yasamin N. Kaye

In only five years of practice, Yasamin N. Kaye has made truly exceptional contributions to both the legal profession and the community. During her tenure at Perkins Coie, she contributed over 800 hours of service through a wide range of pro bono programs, and she brings her commitment to service with her to her new role as an Associate at Goldberg Kohn Ltd.