Pryor Cashman is pleased to announce that partner Todd Soloway, Chair of the firm's Real Estate Litigation Group, and associate Eric Dowell received the 2015 Burton Award for Legal Writing on June 15, 2015.

The Burton Awards, a non-profit program run in association with the Library of Congress, was established to honor the greatest achievements in law, with special emphasis on writing and reform. This year, 35 authors were chosen out of entries submitted from the nation’s 1,000 largest law firms.

Soloway and Dowell were selected for the article, "Enforceability of Indefinite Terms in Real Estate Contracts," which was published on October 29, 2014 in the New York Law Journal. The article examines how in a haste to close real estate deals quickly, transactional documents often leave terms open and undefined and subject to the whims of third parties not involved in the transaction. The article offers realistic solutions to circumvent these obstacles.

This marks the fourth year that Pryor Cashman attorneys have won the Burton award.

In 2010, partner William Charron, a member of the Litigation, Intellectual Property and Media + Entertainment Groups, received the award for his article, "States Turn a Deaf Ear to the Constitution in an Effort to Promote ‘Truth in Music.”

In 2008, partner Pinchus D. Raice, a member of the Banking + Finance Group, won the award for his article with Counsel David Thomas, "Sinners at the Pearly Gates: A Primer on the Standards of Admission to the Banking Fraternity."

Patterned after the Pulitzers, the Burton Awards are funded by the Burton Foundation, a not-for-profit, academic effort dedicated to recognizing and rewarding excellence in the legal profession. Since its inception, the organization has focused primarily on the refinement and enrichment of legal writing, honoring recipients who use plain, clear and concise language in their writing.