About Amy White
Amy White is a former senior editor at Super Lawyers having been with the magazine for 17 years. Prior to that, she was a sports columnist and feature writer for a daily newspaper in Pennsylvania. Her freelance work can be found in Delaware Today Magazine, Mainline Today, Brandywine Hunt, Philadelphia Style and Delaware Beach Life. She is an adjunct professor of writing at the University of Delaware, where she graduated with a journalism degree. She also holds an MFA in publishing and creative writing from Rosemont College and has served as line editor on poetry anthologies and works of contemporary fiction. She loves baseball, bikes, books and coffee.
Articles written by Amy White
Forensic Files
Josh Lee combines his EMT experience with DUI expertiseMoments into an interview, DUI defense attorney Josh Lee’s pager buzzes. He glances down. “I won’t have to run to that one. It’s just a trash can,” he says. “I think the guys can handle a trash can on fire.” It’s not the first time his part-time job has interrupted his full-time job. He’s called a judge before to say he would be late to court because he had to put out a fire, literally, at the home of the judge’s bailiff.In addition to being a lawyer, Lee is a volunteer …
Concerted Action
David Hoffman brings a psychological approach to ADRAt 8:45 a.m. on a Monday, 15 minutes before an interview for this feature on David Hoffman is scheduled to begin, the writer’s email pings. It’s Hoffman’s obituary. It begins: “As you may already know, David earned his wings last night—he passed peacefully in his sleep.” At 9:00, a very much alive David Hoffman appears. Casual T-shirt, a much-loved baseball cap pulled low, a glint in the eye. “Nothing concentrates the mind quite like an execution date,” he says, paraphrasing the …
Moon Shot
NASA agent-turned-attorney Joseph Gutheinz hunts for moon rocksAll it took to lure Florida fruit distributor and owner of illicit moon rock Alan Rosen to Tuna’s in North Miami Beach in 1998 was a fake classified ad in USA Today, an alias worthy of a Godfather movie, a trusty sidekick, and a cool $5 million. Rosen claimed he bought the lunar rock and corresponding plaque—a goodwill gift from the Nixon administration to Honduras in 1973 that was lost after a 1975 military coup—from a Hondruran colonel for $50,000, with the final handoff taking place at …
Challenging But Righteous
How J. Ashlee Albies helped redress a historic wrongA settlement had already been negotiated with the plaintiffs—descendants of Black residents who had been displaced in the 1950s and ’60s from Albina, a once-bustling Portland neighborhood, to make way for a hospital expansion that never panned out. Portland’s city council, and Prosper Portland, its economic and urban development agency, agreed to each pay the plaintiffs $1 million. The ordinance just needed a vote to approve the council’s portion. J. Ashlee Albies, with Portland’s …
Better Than She Found It
Deeva Shah turned a clerkship crisis into a national movementDeeva Shah has one core principle: Leave a place better than you found it. The principle is not theoretical. In 2017, while clerking at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, two female colleagues told her they had been sexually harassed on the job. Shah, less than a year out of law school, tried to help them find a reporting mechanism—only to discover there wasn’t an effective one. “Here I am, a barred attorney, trying to figure out a reporting mechanism in …
The Heart of the Matter
For Tina Thomas, pro bono work has never been an afterthoughtTina Thomas has let her philosophy guide her since her early days in environmental law, which she dove into after graduating from the University of San Diego School of Law in 1979. “You have to have a heart,” Thomas says. “It’s really that simple. As lawyers, we’re fortunate to be well-educated and generally well-compensated, which puts us in a very good position to give back. From the day I started practicing law, this was an idea I incorporated into my work.” As a young associate, …
Cutting a Path
Laura Mattiacci stands up for employees and leads the way for mothers in the lawOne of Laura Mattiacci’s most talked-about employment litigation victories is also one she’s not necessarily clamoring to discuss. In 2023, she represented former Starbucks regional manager Shannon Phillips, who was one of multiple white employees fired after a high-profile arrest of two Black men at a Starbucks near Rittenhouse Square in 2018. The manager of that site—which was under Phillips’ umbrella, though she didn’t directly work there—asked the two men, who hadn’t ordered …
The Road Less Traveled
Elizabeth Gray’s unconventional path to the lawThere isn’t much that Elizabeth Gray hasn’t seen in a quarter century of practicing elder law and estate planning: fights over ashes, “evil children” stealing their parents’ money, people falling victim to catfishing scams, a secret cellphone hidden in a pizza box; and once, all-out warfare over a ceramic cow creamer. “I’ve seen tons of these things at Target,” says Gray, of McCandlish Lillard. “You put milk in it, and when you pour it into your coffee, the milk comes out of …
Finding the After
How April Jones helps everyone around her get to their next best lifeApril Jones had a pretty simple wish list: Cat. Condo. Convertible. Not necessarily in that order. “A condo with a fireplace,” she clarifies, then shrugs. “It was the ’90s. Condos were all the rage.” Jones, all cheekbones, laughs deep and laughs often as she recounts the time, as a young attorney in San Francisco, she tried to hide her second pregnancy from the firm’s partners until she was ready to tell them. She’d confidently bound up the stairs to keep pace with them. “The …
'That's What I'm Going To Do'
Five New Jersey attorneys on what it was like for women in the law in the 1970s—and beyondMichele Donato was the first woman to graduate from Rutgers College. She was also one of New Jersey’s first female land use attorneys, as well as the first female general counsel for New Jersey Planning Officials. In practice since 1977, Donato says she is happily surprised by the state of women in the law today. “It used to be, in the early days, I’d go to a bar association function and there’s maybe three other women, and every male lawyer is trying to pick you up,” she says. …
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