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Paul Gonson

PAUL GONSON - 2006 Recipient

ASECA is proud to announce that Paul Gonson, of Counsel to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, has been selected as the fourteenth recipient of the William O. Douglas Award. The Award, instituted by ASECA in 1993, is conferred annually on an SEC alumnus who has contributed to the development of the federal securities laws and served the financial and SEC community with distinction over the years.

Mr. Gonson served on the staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. for more than 37 years. In his last 20 years at the SEC, from 1979 to 1998, Mr. Gonson served as the Solicitor of the Commission. Mr. Gonson was the SEC's chief appellate lawyer. He supervised hundreds of litigation matters and personally argued more than one hundred appellate cases, including cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and in every U.S. Court of Appeals. These cases involved civil litigation to which the SEC was a party, appeals from SEC orders in administrative proceedings, criminal securities cases prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice, and private actions in which the SEC appeared amicus curiae. While serving as Solicitor, he also was Deputy General Counsel and served about a year as Acting General Counsel. In these capacities, he was the day-to-day manager of a legal department of about 100 lawyers plus support staff, and he provided advice to the SEC Chairman, Commissioners, and division heads on a wide range of issues.

Mr. Gonson, with two former SEC Chairmen, organized a membership non-profit organization, the Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society, and served as its president. Mr. Gonson passed away in 2020.