Three local attorneys are joining the Pima County Superior Court bench as new judges.
The appointments of attorneys Lisa Abrams, Gary Cohen and Jeffrey Sklar were announced Tuesday by Gov. Doug Ducey.
The three will fill positions left vacant by recent retirements of Judges Gus Aragon and Leslie Miller and the promotion of Judge John Hinderaker to the federal bench.
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Abrams started out in the Pima County Public Defender’s Office, then went into private practice where her former clients included Tucson Unified School District. She has been a superior court commissioner since 2010 and volunteers with animal welfare organizations including the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, where she is a former board member. She also serves on the Arizona Supreme Court’s Commission on Minorities in the Judiciary.
Cohen is a partner at the law firm Mesch Clark Rothschild and since 2004 has served as a superior court judge pro tem as a mediator for civil lawsuits. He was an honorary commander at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base from 2017 to 2019 and has served on nonprofit boards including Children’s Museum Tucson, the Tucson Jewish Community Center and Make-A-Wish Foundation Southern Arizona.
Sklar is a partner at Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie where he specialized in business litigation and has served since 2018 as a superior court judge pro tem handling settlement conferences for civil and family law cases. He does pro bono work for Southern Arizona Legal Aid and Step up to Justice, two organizations that serve low-income clients, and is board member for Interfaith Community Services, which serves the elderly, people with disabilities and those in financial crisis.
