Congratulations to our partner Linda Woolf, who was selected by The Daily Record as a 2023 Icon Honors recipient. Linda and fellow honorees accepted the award at a special celebration on December 12, 2023.
The Icon Honors recognizes Maryland leaders over the age of 60 for their notable success and demonstration of strong leadership both within and outside of their chosen field.
Linda is a founding member of Goodell DeVries and served as the firm's Managing Partner from 2005-2020 and Co-Managing Partner from 2020 to 2023. She leads the Commercial Litigation and Insurance practices at Goodell DeVries and represents clients in catastrophic loss, class action and multidistrict litigation, complex commercial, insurance coverage, product liability, and construction litigation. She has represented national and international companies in a wide variety of industries in bet-the company litigation. She is recognized annually by Chambers & Partners and Best Lawyers, two leading directories of the nation's top lawyers and law firms.
Linda also has a longstanding record of leadership and service to the legal community. She has served on the United States District Court of Maryland’s Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel on multiple occasions since 2014 and was recently presented with an Exceptional Service Award in recognition of her work. She served in a number of roles with Maryland Defense Counsel, Inc.; she is a past Member of the Executive Board, past Co-Chair of the Appellate Committee, past Co-Chair of the Judicial Selections Committee; and past Editor of The Defense Line. She has also worked on numerous committees of the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel and the Defense Research Institute (DRI). She served on the Board of Governors of the Federal Bar Association's Maryland Chapter from 2009-2011, and she is a past Chair of the Executive Committee of The Trial Network. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a global honorary society of attorneys, judges, law faculty, and legal scholars whose public and private careers have demonstrated outstanding dedication to the highest principles of the legal profession and to the welfare of their communities.
Active in the community, Linda is a Board Member of the Caroline Center, a nonprofit workforce development organization serving women in Baltimore. She has also served on the boards of the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau's Equal Justice Council (2007-2014), CENTERSTAGE (2009-2017), and Notre Dame Preparatory School (2009-2016).
The Daily Record honored Linda with the Leadership in Law Award in 2006 and named her among Maryland's Top 100 Women twice — in 2007 and 2012. She received the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel's Andrew C. Hecker Award in 2016, recognizing the top legal article submitted for publication that year.