About Aimée Groth

Aimée Groth Articles written 62

Former Super Lawyers associate editor Aimée Groth is currently a partner at HolacracyOne, an organizational design firm that helps companies become more agile and human-centered. A one-time technology journalist who covered Silicon Valley culture for Quartz, she also served as a senior editor at Business Insider. In 2017, Simon & Schuster published her book The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, which Kirkus Reviews called “An intriguing business/sociological chronicle with wider implications for modern corporate practices.”

Articles written by Aimée Groth

The Return of Lenny Sanz

Employment plaintiff attorney Leonard H. Sansanowicz learned empathy as an actor opposite (among others) Steve Carrell

In his third year of law school, Leonard H. Sansanowicz was riding the elevator in the U.S. Attorney’s Office with friends and fellow externs when an assistant U.S. attorney stepped into the elevator, took one look at him and exclaimed, “You’re my criminal!” Sansanowicz, formerly an actor with the stage name Lenny Sanz, had done a training video some years earlier for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in which he played a criminal defendant. “The assistant U.S. attorney had written the …

Brick by Brick

GCs and outside counsel weigh in on best practices to build a solid foundation

Early in her career, Kristina Maritczak witnessed malpractice unfold right before her eyes. A prestigious East Coast firm that her company hired missed crucial details—including the fact that the plaintiff and co-defendant were in a romantic relationship—and overbilled by approximately $250,000 before discovery even began. “I was not the chief legal officer at the time, and I recommended we file grievances against these lawyers for malpractice,” says Maritczak. “But my boss disagreed. …

She Sold That Building

Crystal Lofing’s latest real estate deal involved Dodger Stadium

By the early 2000s, Crystal Lofing, with a master’s degree in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music, was in New York, playing solo recitals and studying with prominent musicians such as Ruth Laredo and Jeffrey Cohen. It was a dream come true. At the same time, it was a tough road. “There are a lot of very talented people competing for the same thing,” she says. So she weighed her options. She remembered how one of her college professors told her she had the intellectual …

Bon Appetit

Pity Jordan R. Bernstein; part of his job involves testing the best restaurants in the city

Jordan R. Bernstein says it’s a misconception that 90 percent of restaurants are destined to fail. “You have to structure a deal that really allows the people with the proper skills to actually use them,” he explains. “Give the chef who has run a back-of-the-house restaurant full control of back of the house, and the general manager control of front of the house. You don’t want a financial investor trying to say what the menu should be, or what vendor you should use.” Bernstein, an …

Art and Craft

Julian André defends stolen art and due process

In 2008, Julian André, a recent University of Virginia School of Law graduate and associate at McDermott Will & Emery, joined a defense team involved in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against a handful of Broadcom Corp. officials for their alleged participation in stock-option backdating. It was a big case. So he did what any newbie lawyer would do. He left to clerk for the Hon. Harry Pregerson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. “Clerking for Judge …

Fostering Hope

Penn State’s Children’s Advocacy Clinic helps young clients with life and legal issues

During her years as a social worker in Virginia’s public school system, Professor Lucy Johnston-Walsh noticed that lawyers would often spend only a few minutes talking to their young clients before walking into court. “I was concerned about the legal representation the children were receiving,” says Johnston-Walsh, now founder and director of the Children’s Advocacy Clinic at The Dickinson School of Law of The Pennsylvania State University. “That’s what motivated me to get my J.D. I …

Controlling the Second

After handling a two-engine failure at 9,000 feet, nothing fazes Brett Godfrey in the courtroom

There was a moment when Brett Godfrey thought he might die. He was steering a twin-engine Cessna 421 over the Rocky Mountains late on a Friday night, after a grueling week of trial in San Jose, Calif. He and a colleague had just dropped off their client in Salt Lake and were en route to Denver to enjoy a three-day weekend. The second leg of their journey started smoothly, but at 23,000 feet, the first engine died. By midnight, they hit a thick layer of clouds and things got worse. Godfrey …

Search, Rescue and Mediate

Attorney Bonnie Schriner and her search and rescue dog are on call

Hurricane Katrina revealed the best and the worst of humanity, which Bonnie M.J. Schriner experienced from the front lines. The devastating hurricane hit on a Monday, and by Tuesday she deployed with FEMA’s Colorado Task Force 1 mission, which included 31 rescue workers, four of whom were canine handlers. The New Orleans airport was closed, so they drove 29 hours from Denver to the Deep South, hauling more than 100,000 pounds of equipment. She’d spent years preparing. In the late 1970s, she …

Tough Crowd

Timothy Coates’ stint as a comedian helps when he argues before the U.S. Supreme Court

As a college student in the 1970s, Timothy Coates performed 1 a.m. comedy shows in Long Beach, Calif., for Navy guys “who were inebriated and hadn’t yet found a companion,” he says with a laugh. “They would start to throw ashtrays. ... Luckily, I never got hurt. So today, no matter how tough a panel, I know the judges will never throw something at me.” Coates spent a year chasing his dream of making people laugh for a living, then decided there must be a better way. After graduating …

Casino Royale

John A. O’Malley argued the case of a lifetime against billionaire Sheldon Adelson

Most people don’t want to battle Las Vegas gaming mogul and self-made billionaire Sheldon Adelson. But in Suen v. Las Vegas Sands Corp., John A. O’Malley, a business litigator with Norton Rose Fulbright, relished the opportunity. “It was a trial lawyer’s dream case,” he says. Back in 2000, Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen mentioned to Adelson the possibility of getting a gaming license in Macau, a former Portuguese territory, then arranged meetings between Adelson, Sands president …

Find top lawyers with confidence

The Super Lawyers patented selection process is peer influenced and research driven, selecting the top 5% of attorneys to the Super Lawyers lists each year. We know lawyers and make it easy to connect with them.

Find a lawyer near you