Tina Williams McKeon, PhD, a founding principal of Meunier, Carlin and Curfman, LLC, has been named as the “Atlanta Best Lawyers Patent Law Lawyer of the Year” for 2012 by Best Lawyers, the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession.

Only a single lawyer in each specialty in each community is being honored as “Lawyer of the Year.” Dr. McKeon was selected for Atlanta in the area of Patent Law by her peers. This is the first year that Best Lawyers has designated “Lawyers of the Year” in high-profile legal specialties in large legal communities.

The lawyers being honored as “Lawyers of the Year” received particularly high ratings in the peer surveys conducted by Best Lawyers, earning a high level of respect among their peers for their abilities, professionalism and integrity.

Dr. McKeon has also been selected by her peers for inclusion in the 2010, 2011 and 2012 editions of The Best Lawyers in America®. She has been recognized by Chambers and Partners annually since 2009, which stated she “has a respected postdoctoral academic background and is highly regarded for her ‘great depth of knowledge,’ particularly in biotech matters.” She was also voted one of Atlanta Magazine’s Georgia Super Lawyers-Rising Stars in 2005, Georgia Super Lawyers in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, and one of Georgia Trend Magazine’s “Legal Elite” in 2004 and 2007. Dr. McKeon’s practice focuses on patent prosecution, IP strategy and IP portfolio management for leading universities and research institutions, as well as corporations, in the life sciences and biotechnology fields.

She contributes her talent and time to a number of bioscience and medical device organizations. Dr. McKeon has taught since 2005 in the TI:GER® Program, a collaboration between various Georgia Tech colleges and Emory University School of Law focusing on technology commercialization in a multidisciplinary context.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she received her PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and received her JD from Emory University with distinction, Order of the Coif.

Best Lawyers compiles its lists of outstanding attorneys by conducting exhaustive peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers. The current, 18th edition of The Best Lawyers in America (2012) is based on more than 3.9 million detailed evaluations of lawyers by other lawyers.

Steven Naifeh, President of Best Lawyers, says, “We continue to believe – as we have believed for more than 25 years – that recognition by one’s peers is the most meaningful form of praise in the legal profession. We would like to congratulate Tina McKeon on being selected as the ‘Atlanta Best Lawyers Patent Law Lawyer of the Year’ for 2012.”