Several members of the Harvard Law School faculty and over a dozen alumni were named to The National Law Journal’s list of 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.

In publishing its first list since 2006, the journal said its goal was to identify members of law’s power elite. The list recognizes the 100 lawyers in the United States “who have shaped the legal world through their work in the courtroom, at the negotiating table, in the classroom or on Capitol Hill.”

Harvard Law School Professors Lawrence Lessig and Cass Sunstein ‘78, and Lecturers on Law Martin Bienenstock, Dale Cendali ’84, Thomas Goldstein and William Lee were included on this year’s list. Several of the alums on the list have also taught at HLS.

Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professorship of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law, is a leading scholar on copyright and trademark law, and an expert on the future of intellectual property and technology. He is the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard.

Sunstein, director of the new Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, was recently named a University Professor at Harvard, Harvard’s highest honor for a faculty member. He most recently served as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where he played a key role in federal rulemaking. One of the nation’s most-cited legal scholars, and one of the most prolific, his latest book, “Simpler: The Future of Government,” is due out in April.”

Bienenstock, a partner at Proskauer Rose and chair of the firm’s Business Solutions, Governance, Restructuring & Bankruptcy Department, is currently teaching “Corporate Reorganization” at Harvard Law School as a lecturer on law for Spring Term 2013.

Cendali, a member of the HLS Class of 1984, is a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, New York and a leading light in copyright and trademark. She is head of Kirkland & Ellis’ copyright, trademark and Internet practice groups. She taught “Copyright and Trademark Litigation” at Harvard Law School in the Fall.

A partner at Goldstein, Howe & Russell, in Washington, D.C., Goldstein co-teaches “Supreme Court Litigation” in the Winter term course as a lecturer on law at Harvard. In 2003, he founded SCOTUSblog, now sponsored by Bloomberg, which attracted 5 million hits on the day of the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act rulings in 2012.

Lee is a co-managing partner of WilmerHale and is one of the country’s foremost intellectual property and commercial litigation attorneys. He helped secure the victory against Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in the continuing smartphone patent wars with a record $1.05 billion jury verdict last year in favor of Apple Inc. He taught a section of the “Problem Solving Workshop” in the Winter Term 2013.

Alumni included on the list are:

Floyd Abrams ’56
Partner, Cahill Gordon & Reindel, New York
A member of the executive committee and Cahill Gordon & Reindel’s litigation practice group, Abrams has fought hard to protect unpopular speech and media, from the Pentagon Papers case to Citizens United. He is author of “Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment,” published by Viking Press.

Robert S. Bennett LL.M. ’65
Partner, Hogan Lovells, Washington, D.C.
During an almost 40-year career, Bennett has represented Washington’s elites in some of the most high-profile white-collar criminal matters. He represented President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones scandals and the former The New York Times reporter Judith Miller for her involvement in the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.

Morgan Chu ’76
Partner, Irell & Manella, Los Angeles
Chu, an intellectual property attorney, is chair of the firm’s Litigation Group. He has represented TiVo Inc. for more than a decade in patent infringement cases and brought in more than $1 billion plus royalties for that client alone. He has also represented the City of Hope National Medical Center in its fight against Genentech Inc. His wins over the years have had far-reaching implications in guiding companies’ use and defense of patents.

Paul Clement ‘92
Partner, Bancroft, Washington, D.C.
Clement, who served as Solicitor General from 2005 to 2008, is now a U.S. Supreme Court advocate for conservative causes and last year challenged the Affordable Care Act. Prior to his confirmation as Solicitor General, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for over three years. Clement was recently profiled in the Harvard Law Bulletin.

H. Rodgin Cohen ’68
Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell, New York
Cohen is a legendary corporate attorney with a number of recent high-profile deals, including IntercontinentalExchange Inc.’s $8.32 billion bid to buy the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. Over the past several years he has devoted substantial time to regulatory, law enforcement and internal investigations of financial institutions including participating in the resolution of most major bank failures. Among Mr. Cohen’s numerous recent honors and recognitions are a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the M&A industry and an award for his contributions to regulatory reform.

Cari Dawson ’93
Partner, Alston & Bird, Atlanta
Dawson is chair of the Class Action Practice Team for the Litigation & Trial Practice Group at Alston & Bird. She concentrates her practice on complex litigation matters, with particular focus on class action defense. As defense counsel for Toyota Motor Corp., Dawson was instrumental in reducing a potential class of consumers in sudden-acceleration cases just before the automaker reached a nationwide settlement, valued at $1.3 billion by the plaintiffs attorneys.

Brackett Denniston ’73
Senior Vice President and General Counsel, General Electric Co.
Denniston is a director of GE Capital Corporation and the GE Foundation, and is a member of GE’s Corporate Executive Council. He was Chief Legal Counsel to Governor William F. Weld of Massachusetts and Chief of the Major Frauds Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, responsible for white collar crime prosecutions. He received the Department of Justice’s Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his role overseeing numerous successful prosecutions. At GE Denniston is known for his diversity efforts, demanding that outside counsel assign substantive matters to minority attorneys.

Patrick Fitzgerald ‘85
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Chicago
Fitzgerald, who is currently a member of the government enforcement and white-collar criminal defense practice at Skadden, was previously the longest-serving U.S. attorney in Chicago, where he helped convict former Illinois governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich. Before his 2001 appointment as U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Illinois, he was a federal prosecutor in New York.

Patricia Ann Millett ‘88
Partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Washington, D.C.
A former assistant solicitor general, Millett heads Akin’s Supreme Court practice and is co-leader of the firm’s appellate team. She made history last year when she argued her 31st case before the U.S. Supreme Court, more than any other woman. On March 18, she went before the Supreme Court on behalf of the challengers of a voter-registration requirement in Arizona.

John B. Quinn ’76
Managing Partner, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Los Angeles
A managing partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and a prominent business trial lawyer, he is also general counsel to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Eric T. Schneiderman ‘82
Attorney General, State of New York
As New York state’s top lawyer, elected as the 65th Attorney General of New York State in 2010, he sued JPMorgan Chase & Co., alleging that its Bear Stearns unit had defrauded investors who bought mortgage-backed securities. He has taken a leading role in the national fight for a comprehensive investigation of misconduct in the mortgage market. In 2011, he balked at an Obama administration deal with the banking industry and won tougher penalties.

Kathleen Sullivan ‘81
Partner, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, New York
A former dean of Stanford Law School and a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School from 1984 to 1993, she is widely recognized as one of the nation’s preeminent appellate litigators. She became the first female name partner at an Am Law 100 firm, in 2010.

Timothy Wu ’98
Professor, Columbia Law School, New York
Timothy Wu, author of “The Master Switch,” has helped shape the debate around competition and consumer protection on the Internet. He coined the term “net neutrality” and worked as a senior adviser to the Federal Trade Commission in 2011, helping the agency conceptualize its antitrust case against Google Inc. and running the FTC’s policy-platform group. He was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in 2011.