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
Sgt. Charles Tesser's WWII Signal Corps Photos
The first time Lewis Tesser saw the collection of photographs his father, Sgt. Charles Tesser, took during World World II as a Signal Corps photographer for the U.S. Army, it was the 1960s and he was just a teenager. Fifty years later, he found the photos again, shortly after his father’s death in 2004. In this year's edition of New York Super Lawyers magazine, we featured the story of how Tesser turned those photos into a book, In The Thick of Things. In honor of Veterans Day, we asked …
‘Part of the History of this Country’
Wayne Drinkwater and Luther T. Munford recall clerking at the U.S. Supreme CourtWayne Drinkwater Clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger, 1976-1977 I was doing a federal clerkship in Mississippi when it dawned on me that it wouldn’t cost more than a stamp and an envelope to apply for a Supreme Court clerkship. I still don’t know how I got the interview. Time passed and I got a call from the chief justice’s administrative assistant. She said, “If you were offered a clerkship with Chief Justice Warren Burger, would you take it?” I said, “Ma’am, that is …
"Look, this is the conversation that's probably happening right now behind closed doors"
What tax attorney Caroline Ciraolo learned at the DOJWhen Caroline Ciraolo says there’s not a day since her 1994 clerkship at the U.S. Tax Court that she doesn’t wake up psyched to go to work, that’s not hyperbole. “I love what I do,” says Ciraolo, who works in civil tax controversy litigation and criminal tax investigations and prosecutions. So when a peer who worked at the Department of Justice suggested to Ciraolo that she’d be a good fit for the tax division, Ciraolo demurred. “I was flattered, but I tend to plant roots—I …
Rochester’s “Candid Talk Women” Duo Share Their Top 10 Takeaways
Bernadette Catalana and Kelly Odorisi have a singular mission: empower women lawyers to opt inBFFs Bernadette Catalana (Lavin O’Neill) and Kelly Odorisi (Law Office of Kelly Odorisi) noticed something disturbing a few years ago—too many young, promising women attorneys leaving the law. A conversation between the friends about what has afforded them staying power inspired a traveling CLE-certified chat-fest tailored toward women and the law. “Candid Talk Women” has presented across the country, and Catalana and Odorisi have a book in the works, too. Here, they share their Top 10 …
The Things He Carried
Lewis Tesser’s book of his father’s World War II photos is now in the National ArchivesThe first time Lewis Tesser saw the box of photos, he was 15. He and his father, Charles Tesser, were in the basement, where they could often be found hunched over an old workbench working on projects, when his father showed him the box. “I’m embarrassed to say I was disappointed,” Tesser says. “It wasn’t full of blood and gore and guts and people shooting each other.” Instead, he saw black-and-white images of the minutiae that made up the day of an American soldier in World War II: …
‘Let Someone Else Make the Porridge’
Rochester lawyers Bernadette Catalana and Kelly Odorisi get candid about women and the lawFrom a conference room overlooking Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, Bernadette Catalana and Kelly Odorisi make one thing clear: “This is not a man-bashing forum.” Catalana, a civil litigator with Lavin, O’Neil, Cedrone & DiSipio; and Odorisi, with an eponymous estate and trust firm—both in Rochester—are in Philadelphia to present “Candid Talk Women At The Bar,” their CLE-certified, informal chat-fest tailored toward women lawyers with a singular mission: encourage women …
Chip Merlin’s Well-Grounded Boots
When disaster strikes, this Tampa lawyer helps victims stake their claimsAs a young attorney, William “Chip” Merlin thought about the moment he’d meet his maker, and the sentence he most did not want to say: “Hi! I just saved Travelers Insurance $25 million.” Merlin began his career at a law firm that did nothing but property insurance defense work. He was busy but unfulfilled. “It occurred to me that there was no one on the policyholder side doing this on a regular basis, and the insurance companies had a big advantage because they had people like …
6 Million Views
How Karra Porter’s viral client led to a pro bono initiative and a 22-year-old cold caseYou’ve seen the video. University of Utah Hospital nurse Alex Wubbels was on call July 26, 2017 when Salt Lake City police detective Jeff Payne asked that he be allowed to draw blood from an unconscious patient. Wubbels explained to Payne that hospital policy permitted blood draws only when an officer had a warrant, the patient was under arrest or the patient had consented. “I’m just trying to do what I’ve been told to do,” Wubbels said to Payne on the video recording. “ … I …
And The Winner Is ...
Move over, Meryl—Doneene Keemer Damon’s awards case is looking pretty goodIn 1999, when Doneene Keemer Damon made partner at Richards Layton & Finger in Wilmington, Delaware, one particular back-slapping comment, repeated several times, confused her: “Congratulations on being the first!” “I was going to myself, ‘The first? What is that supposed to mean?’” she remembers. It took a colleague to tell Damon that she was the first African-American lawyer to make partner at a major Delaware law firm. “It was a shock, in a good way, but it was also …
Rachael Anna’s GOOOALLLLS!
Before finding the law, Rachael Anna traveled the world and played pro soccerIn what would likely be a parent’s nightmare scenario, Rachael Anna spent a year thumbing a ride nearly every day in Brazil. Anna, who played professional soccer with the Santos Futebol Clube in 2003, saw the decision as half initiation and half desperation. “I walked on to that team, so I had to learn very quickly how to fit in. That meant quickly picking up Portuguese, and getting the Brazilian style of play, which was with flair and very rhythmic,” she says. “It was potentially six …
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