VALERIE A. YARASHUS is a principal at the Boston law firm of Meehan, Boyle, Black & Bogdanow, PC, where she concentrates in plaintiff’s trial practice, including premises liability, motor vehicle liability, construction site liability, fire/explosion cases, medical malpractice, defective products, liquor liability, nursing home litigation, and a wide variety of other general liability cases. Previously, she was a founding partner of the Boston law firm of Yarashus Wagner Cook Freiberger & Washienko LLC, and for eighteen years she practiced law at the Boston law firm of Sugarman and Sugarman, PC, where she was a principal for thirteen years. Ms. Yarashus is president-elect of the Massachusetts Bar Association. She is a past president of the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys (2002–2003) as well as a member of its board of governors. Ms. Yarashus has been listed in every edition of The Best Lawyers in America from 2005 to the present. She was named by Law and Politics magazine as a Massachusetts Super Lawyer, as selected by her peers, every year since its inception, and she has been selected by this “Best of Boston” survey as one of the top fifty female lawyers in Massachusetts in every year from 2005 to the present. She has been honored in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s “Up and Coming Lawyers’ Hall of Fame,” an honor that has been bestowed on only three other Massachusetts lawyers. Ms. Yarashus is a frequent speaker and writer for continuing legal education, both locally and nationally. She graduated from George Washington University (summa cum laude, 1987) and Harvard Law School (cum laude, 1990), where she served as executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review. (April 2009)