The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized hundreds of Colorado attorneys across dozens of practice areas in its 2027 edition.
Law Week Colorado is highlighting Colorado attorneys whose firms reported their recognition to LWC, including six attorneys profiled in greater depth. The entries were self-reported by participating law firms and are not intended to represent a comprehensive list of Colorado attorneys recognized in the 2027 edition.
When Christopher Mosley was in fourth grade, his mother placed a thick textbook on the family pool table.
The book was on torts. Mosley didn’t know what the word meant, but he was intrigued: his first interest in law. He was also inspired by his mother, who after 25 years as a teacher, went to law school before establishing a groundbreaking legal career in California.
Decades later, Mosley is an equity partner in Reed Smith’s Denver office, where he focuses on insurance recovery, commercial litigation and, specifically, construction-related insurance disputes.
After receiving his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, Mosley was assigned to work with Bruce Celebrezze, whom he still considers his greatest mentor. Their first day together “was the first day of my life that I heard anybody intentionally use the phrase insurance coverage,” he said. Thankfully, those words intrigued him, too.
One early case involved a diseased vineyard graft that wiped out the receiving vineyard. “What I realized was that insurance exists in every business in the country,” he said. “This was a pathway for me to really get to have a chance to experience lots of different industries, businesses and companies.”
When Mosley joined Sherman & Howard in 1994, the firm did not have an insurance-coverage practice. As a midlevel associate, he noticed lawyers circulating requests for referrals when clients needed help with insurance matters. He began taking that work and conducted his own survey showing Denver had no full-time commercial policyholder lawyer. So, he built one.
Over the years, Mosley has handled coverage matters involving directors and officers liability, environmental and pollution policies, builders’ risk, commercial property, trucking insurance and even a space-liability policy. In September, he argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in a construction-defect case involving an insurance-coverage issue.
Mosley spent 28 years at Sherman & Howard. He joined Reed Smith in 2025, helping to launch its Denver office.
He is a member of the American College of Coverage Counsel, where he served for about four years on its board of regents, and was honored to receive the Thomas F. Segalla Service Award. He previously led the American Bar Association’s insurance-coverage litigation committee.
The Best Lawyers in America® recently named Mosley its 2027 Denver Lawyer of the Year for Insurance Law.
“When I look at these luminaries who are out there, I’m amazed, that, wow, you actually think I do a pretty good job, not only for my clients, but for the profession as a whole,” he said with a laugh.
Mosley has focused much of his pro bono work on organizations supporting children and was a member on the board of trustees of Escuela de Guadalupe, a dual-language Catholic school, for several years.
He also enjoys coaching youth baseball, often for his own children’s teams when they were younger. “I loved every minute of it,” he said, recalling the satisfaction of watching a child finally get a first hit after struggling through a season. “It was a blessing.”
He and his wife have six children between them, now grown, and these days he appreciates traveling with them and watching them establish their own lives.