Burch & Cracchiolo is proud to announce R.J. "Bucky" Slomski has been selected by The Phoenix Business Journal to its 2026 "40 Under 40" class. The annual award celebrates the accomplishments of the Valley's outstanding young executives and entrepreneurs who are making big moves in their careers. They were selected by a panel of judges made up of previous 40 Under 40 winners from a pool of 367 nominees. The entire class will be celebrated at an awards event August 6th at The Scottsdale Princess Resort & Hotel.
Bucky’s career reflects the four criteria that define this award: business success, leadership, influence and community impact. As a Shareholder at Burch & Cracchiolo, his complex-injury practice has produced repeated seven-figure outcomes for Arizona families devastated by catastrophic personal injury, medical negligence, and wrongful death. He has been recognized by Best Lawyers, Super Lawyers, Phoenix Magazine, National Trial Lawyers Association, and AZ Big Media – every single year since 2019, a cadence few Arizona lawyers under 40 can claim.
In December 2019, Bucky’s Father – Raymond J. Slomski, Jr., one of Arizona’s most respected Plaintiff trial lawyers and Bucky’s legal mentor – was killed in a trucking collision. Bucky, then still early in his career at the Law Offices of Raymond J. Slomski, P.C., was forced to wind down the father-son practice they had built together. The loss was profound: not only of a father, but of a legal North Star.
That loss became the defining pillar of his career. Rather than leave the profession, Bucky chose to carry his father’s legacy forward—and to specialize in precisely the category of catastrophic injury and wrongful-death cases that claimed his father’s life. He joined Burch & Cracchiolo in 2020, made Shareholder four years later, and today represents families navigating the same kind of sudden senseless loss he lived through.
The experience transformed Bucky’s advocacy. Clients regularly describe him as someone who not only understands the legal process but also understands the weight of what they have lost. That empathy, paired with aggressive preparation and trial skill, is the difference-maker.
Internally, Bucky is a next-generation leader at a 35-plus attorney firm founded in 1970, where he chairs the Firm’s marketing committee and serves on its technology committee leading the firm’s AI implementation. He mentors and guides associates and partners, bringing the hard-won judgment of a lawyer who has litigated cases primarily for Plaintiffs but also Defendants—a breadth of expertise few attorneys share.
Outside the Firm, Bucky chairs the executive board of Feeding Matters, the Scottsdale-founded nonprofit that was the catalyst for Pediatric Feeding Disorder becoming a stand-alone ICD-10 diagnosis in 2021—an achievement that today unlocks insurance coverage for millions of American children. He has helped transform the organization from an Arizona-based charity into a nationally influential voice in pediatric medicine.