Newton, MA—Boston College Law School held its annual Curtin Public Interest Center reception on Tuesday, October 23 in the School’s “Yellow Room.” The Hon. Lynda Connolly, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court, was honored at the reception with the Curtin Public Interest Center Pro Bono Service Award.

The award is given to an attorney who has shown commitment to pro bono work and whose work exemplifies the school’s mission to train a diverse student body not purely to be good lawyers, but to be lawyers who lead good lives, and who will be prepared to seek and find meaningful work in service to others. It is named in honor of John J. and Mary Daly Curtin, founders of the Curtin Center.

Chief Justice Connolly is a 1974 graduate of BC Law, and an Alumni Association board member. She began her career as a Special Prosecutor in the Major Violator’s Division of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office and spent several years in private practice at Connolly & Johnson and at Gallagher & Gallagher, P.C. She was also a sole practitioner. In 1997 she was appointed to the Marlborough District Court as an Associate Justice by Governor William F. Weld, and served as the Acting First Justice in the Charlestown District Court. Chief Justice Connolly was appointed First Justice in the Dedham District Court in 2003. In June 2004 she was appointed Chief Justice of the District Court upon the retirement of former Chief Justice Samuel E. Zoll. In conjunction with her judicial appointments she has chaired the Supreme Judicial Court/Trial Court Budget Advisory Committee and has served on the District Court Committee on Continuing Judicial Education and the District Court Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse.

Chief Justice Connolly has taught as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Bentley College and as an Adjunct Professor at Suffolk University Law School and New England School of Law, and has served as a guest lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is the author of “Wills, Estates and Trusts” in the 1981 ANNUAL SURVEY OF MASSACHUSETTS LAW published by Boston College Law School. In 2008 she was awarded the Daniel J. Toomey Judicial Excellence Award by the Massachusetts Bar Association and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.