1-4-23 William F. Savino to receive UB School of Law’s highest honor.
William F. Savino, a prominent litigator and a senior partner in the Buffalo Office of Woods Oviatt Gilman LLP, will receive the 2023 Edwin F. Jaeckle Award - the highest honor the University at Buffalo School of Law and the UB Law Alumni Association can bestow. The award is given annually to a person who exemplifies the highest ideals of the law school and its alumni association and who has made significant contributions to the school and the legal profession.
The presentation will take place on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Savino will accept the award during a dinner program at Kleinhans Music Hall located at 3 Symphony Circle in Buffalo.
Savino is a member of Woods Oviatt Gilman’s litigation department. His practice includes business litigation matters involving construction, corporate and partnership dissolution, accounting malpractice, and the Uniform Commercial Code. He also focuses on insolvency issues with an emphasis on reorganizations and mediates corporate and commercial disputes.
In April 2021, Savino was selected as a fellow in the Construction Lawyers Society of America (CLSA). The CLSA is an invitation-only international honorary association composed of preeminent lawyers who focus their practices on construction law and related fields.
He has repeatedly earned designation as a “Top 10 Upstate New York Attorney” by Super Lawyers magazine, ranking third in 2013. His peers have selected him for inclusion in this year's edition of The Best Lawyers in America. He has been named on Buffalo Business First’s “Who's Who in Law" list for the past eight years, and among the Legal Elite in Western New York for several years, in addition to many other recognitions.
Savino earned his B.A., with high honors, from the University of Rochester and graduated cum laude from UB School of Law in 1975. While in law school, the Buffalo Law Review published a casebook review he authored titled Copyright, Patent, Trademark and Related State Doctrines: Cases and Materials by Paul Goldstein. Since graduation, his co-authored work has been published by the Journal of Accountancy, West’s UCC Bulletin, and Syracuse Law Review.
Savino has taught business law at the UB School of Management since 1979, including in its Executive MBA program. At the law school, he has taught a course on commercial litigation since 2001. In 2019, he received the law school’s Ken Joyce Excellence in Teaching Award for his outstanding performance in the classroom and his longstanding service to the law school.
A past president of the UB Law Alumni Association and a longtime member of the Dean’s Advisory Council, Savino also received a Distinguished Alumni Award for Business Achievements in 2014.
Since high school and throughout his legal career, Savino has performed as a jazz bassist with several bands, including more than two decades with fellow UB Law graduate, Kenneth Africano ’85 in their current band, Jelly Jar. He has also served on the boards of The Northwest Jazz Festival, The Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Niagara Falls Music Hall of Fame.
The Jaeckle Award is named for Edwin F. Jaeckle ’15, a founding partner of the Buffalo law firm Jaeckle, Fleischmann & Mugel, and a major benefactor of the school. Savino joins several other esteemed members of the legal community who have previously received this award including Hon. Charles S. Desmond, Hon. Matthew J. Jasen, Manly Fleischmann, Jacob D. Hyman, Hon. M. Dolores Denman, William R. Greiner, and Hon. Hugh B. Scott, among others.
Questions? Contact the Law Alumni Office law-alumni@buffalo.edu, or call 716-645-2107.
