Senior Associate, Litigation, Hale & Mercer LLP · Discovery, insurance coverage, the file nobody wants to read
Chicago · Hale & Mercer LLP · 911+ connections
I am a litigator at Hale & Mercer. I build the case file nobody else wants to build, and I find what is in it. In 2023 that meant reading 40,000 pages of discovery the other side had dismissed as irrelevant; two paragraphs on page 31,207 turned a denied claim into a $4.2 million recovery.
I grew up doing homework at a corner table in my parents' bakery in Dearborn, listening to my mother argue with suppliers. A good argument needs receipts. I bring them.
Climbing three nights a week, ka'ak for every firm birthday, and two crosswords published in the Tribune.
Won a motion in the Northern District this week on the papers, no argument. Three months of work compressed into 14 pages. The judge cited page 9. That's the one I rewrote six times.
Advice to first-year litigators: when a partner says 'these documents are probably irrelevant,' that is your cue to read every one of them. 'Probably' is where cases live.
Twice a month I volunteer at the Arab American Family Services legal clinic in Bridgeview. Most of what people need is not a lawsuit. It's someone to read the letter and tell them what it means. Lawyers forget how much that is worth.
Reading the letter is the whole first meeting. Every time.
Insurance coverage, commercial disputes, first-chair motions in the Northern District. Discovery strategy for the group.
Document review that turned out to matter. The 2023 coverage dispute.
Learned how a judge reads a brief: fast, suspicious, and looking for the page cite.
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, J.D., 2018
University of Michigan, B.A. Political Science, 2015
The one you rewrote six times is always the one they cite. Congratulations.
Fourteen pages. The other side filed 38. Length is not an argument.