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
Smack Dab in the Middle of Writing and the Law
Jo Hackl finds a way to balance, and succeed, in both pursuitsWhen Jo Hackl commits to something, she goes all in. So when Cricket, the tween heroine of Hackl’s middle-grade fiction debut, Smack Dab In The Middle of Maybe, got lost in the woods and had to figure out how to survive, Hackl thought she oughta know how to do the same. She took several outdoor survival classes (see photo of her class below; Hackl and her daughter are on the left), where she learned how to make a weed salad, get water out of a birch tree and build a fire. “I spent a lot of …
Reign Maker
The multidisciplined life of Saidah GrimesIf you want to impress Saidah Grimes, show up at her office with a glinting fantasy football trophy in hand or casually sprinkle Orioles stats into conversation. “Let’s just say one of my biggest loves outside of law is sports,” she says. “I am in a number of fantasy leagues; I love the Orioles, and I am a former college athlete and high school summer league softball coach. Sports is a big part of my life.” Grimes may be a former Miss Black Maryland USA, but she’s an atypical beauty …
The Awakening
Serial made Robert DiCello famous, but it was his case against East Cleveland that made historyWhen Robert DiCello’s assistant told him a man on the phone wanted to talk to him about a podcast, DiCello brushed it off. He was busy. What did he want, anyway? “It’s about the Arnold Black case,” his assistant said. “Tell him I’m not interested.” The calls kept coming. “Finally, I take the call to tell this guy, Emmanuel, I’m not into it, and he’s like, ‘This is for Serial. We’re investigating the Cuyahoga County court system.’ I’m like, ‘That’s nice, but …
Attorney's Bees
Don’t test Bill Ford—he once shook up 10,000 live beesBill Ford blames the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption for his decision to head to law school. The Lathrop Gage lawyer always had a thing for the outdoors, and he had a plan. “I was going to be a park ranger,” he says. “The summer between my sophomore and junior year of college, that was going to involve [an internship as] a fire spotter in the Bitterroot wildlife area up in Idaho.” But then Mount St. Helens erupted, and the gig went from being a fire-spotter to being an ash-shoveler. …
Keeping the Vision
Former TV producer Laverne Berry is now the star of a voting rights documentaryGrowing up, Laverne Berry was so enthralled with television that she wrote a one-and-a-half page Perry Mason script in crayon and begged her parents for piano lessons because The Liberace Show was having a moment. That passion never went away. After she got her B.A. at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, Berry pursued a graduate degree in radio, television and film at Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. Then she went to work at RKO General Television’s local New York …
The Linchpin
From a Hollywood life to Albany law, the common theme was communicationJulieAnn Calareso can thank the Colin Farrell flick Phone Booth for her career change. It was 1999, and Calareso was living that Hollywood life as an assistant to the director of creative affairs for Kopelson Entertainment. You’d find Calareso reading scripts or doing legwork for movie deals. “From 1996 to 1999, I slept with a beeper under my pillow,” she says. Calareso thought she’d be a journalist or TV writer. A communication degree felt like it would give wiggle room for either …
Unbecoming
Natasha Hazlett—lawyer, author, influencerNatasha Hazlett is a triple threat. She doesn’t act, dance or sing. She’s in the lawyering, branding and influencing biz. “I kind of fell into it,” she says of her outside-the-billable-hour pursuits. She and her husband, a former ad exec for Fortune 500s, spearhead Fast Forward Marketing, a training and consulting company. Their mission: help clients define, build and monetize their authentic personal brand. Feeling out of sorts with “just” being a lawyer, Hazlett jumped aboard a …
DIY Legal Documents on the Internet May Lead to Trouble
Tamara Kurtzman knows it sounds self-serving, but she says entrepreneurs should steer clear of the internet as a source of legal legwork for their startups. “You need to actually see a lawyer,” she says. “Sadly, it’s the first thing that most people don’t do.” She gets it — startups are often tight on cash and focused on the dream. “Online resources are vast, and while DIY legal is very tempting, it’s also a disaster waiting to happen,” says Kurtzman, of TMK Attorneys in …
RBG: The 'B' is for Box Office
Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a cinematic 2018—but she’s been starring in our pages for a while"RBG" was the second-biggest documentary at the 2018 box office. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is ready for her close-up. Again. In May 2018, the documentary RBG premiered. It grossed $14 million at the box office, the second highest-grossing documentary of 2018. And on Christmas Day, a feature film about Ginsburg opened: On The Basis of Sex starring Felicity Huffman as Ginsburg and Armie Hammer as her husband, tax attorney Martin Ginsburg. Plus it’s not …
The Storm Kit
After a battle with cancer, John E. Keefe Jr. is using his experience to help protect other lawyersThe thing about being diagnosed with cancer is that the “Open” sign still turns on the next morning. New Jersey State Bar President John E. Keefe Jr. knows that all too well. Keefe, of Keefe Law Firm, says the news of his cancer diagnosis in 2017 rocked him. “I’m a competitive, type-A worker, partner, dad and husband, but I immediately had to change my focus to stay alive,” he says. The diagnosis was one thing. Processing it was another. “All the things that go through your …
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