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
It’s All About the Relationships
Jared Nelson’s journey from parole agent to workers’ comp lawyerBorn and raised in New York City, Jared Nelson was earning his B.A. in government at the University of Virginia, and imagining a career in the FBI or CIA, when he met Joelle, now his wife, who is from Louisiana. “My journey truly started when I came down to Louisiana,” Nelson says. “I think the CIA might have been fantasy,” he says, laughing. “But it all sounded pretty cool.” It didn’t sound entirely realistic, though. So after he earned his master’s in public administration at …
‘Our Job Is to Feel’
Jeralyn Lawrence is a big fan of nourishing the spirit. (Also of Taylor Swift)There’s enough going on in Jeralyn Lawrence’s Watchung law firm to dazzle a visitor before they even get to Jeralyn Lawrence. First there’s the landscaping. “That’s all sod, baby,” Lawrence says with pride as she shows off the exquisite slice of green leading up to Lawrence Law, as well as the vivid, fiery mums in the flowerbeds. A beautiful spiral staircase in her office leads to a loft that sits above Lawrence’s desk. She had it builtas a study and computer space for her three …
The Bigger Picture
Anna Roppo was given a death sentence nine years agoAnna Roppo knew something was wrong the minute her longtime family doctor dropped the ‘F’ bomb. It was 2016, and Roppo, a litigator at Duckor Metzger & Wynne in San Diego, was sitting in her car in the parking lot of an imaging center, poring over the results of a scan. It used words like “right lobe tumor mass measurements” so it couldn’t be hers. It must’ve been given to her by mistake. Right? That’s when her doctor phoned her. “He said, ‘Anna, get the ‘f’ to my …
Securing Services
Social Security law is Stacey J. Dembo’s callingStacey Dembo’s family has a very specific rallying call: Make the world a better place for people with disabilities. Dembo, a Social Security lawyer, fights for their rights from her solo firm in Chicago. Her brother is a researcher who specializes in disability issues. Their parents have lobbied and fundraised for the facility where Dembo’s little sister, Leslee—the family’s inspiration—has lived since she was 2. “My sister is profoundly disabled,” Dembo says. “She doesn’t …
‘Full of Dreams’
Daisy Ayllón ensures her clients’ entire stories are toldDaisy Ayllón’s definition of success is less about where you end up in life than the distance you traveled to get there. And she doesn’t know anyone more successful than her mother. “This is a woman who doesn’t have more than a sixth-grade education; who grew up in a deeply impoverished farming community in Mexico where women were not valued; who was one of 11 children; who, somehow, without knowing a word of English—and who was utterly reliant on men to provide for her—managed to …
A Land of Opportunity
How four immigrant lawyers arrived and thrived in MarylandGerman A. Rodriguez and his wife have a running joke about his American origin story. It stems from the episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy writes a play about the arrival of her husband, Cuban musician Ricky Ricardo. “She’s like, ‘He clutched his little threadbare knapsack as his leaky cattle boat steamed into New York Harbor,’ and Ricky is like, ‘What are you talking about?! I came in on a beautiful ship with 40 other musicians and all our instruments,’” …
The Neelley Commutation
Barry Ragsdale’s 30-year crusade for one of Alabama’s most notorious killersWhen senior partners at Sirote & Permutt assigned 31-year-old Barry Ragsdale to the pro bono representation of Judith Ann Neelley in 1989, he tried to pass. “I still have the memo I wrote that said, ‘No, I’m not going to do this because it’s pro bono—I won’t get any credit toward my billable-hour goals and collected-dollar goals,’” Ragsdale says. “They correctly ignored me and told me to get to work.” He adds: “If I’m going to get credit for having taken on a pro …
From the Outside
Former deputy general counsel Andy Hirth is still working to improve the governmentAndy Hirth wanted to be a man of the people, but, as an adjunct professor of English at the University of Missouri, the people he found himself surrounded by were often the fictional type. “I felt called to do something different, and I thought that different thing was being a lawyer,” he says. Post-law school, Hirth wound up working for a big firm in Chicago for three years. But he couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to be of service. “I never felt like I was doing the right thing in …
A Desire for Service
Jerina Phillips lives out her earliest dreams to do goodTwo pivotal moments pointed Jerina Phillips down the path of justice. The first came when she was 12 and her parents transferred her from an East St. Louis public school to a Catholic private school. “It was eye-opening,” Phillips says. “In East St. Louis, I saw firsthand a lot of kids living in poverty. There were a lot of failing schools. … The differences between my old school and my new school were stark: classroom size, access to technology, new books. I thought, ‘This is really …
The Intersection of Law & Politics
Richard St. Paul has been White House intern, city council member, and mayoral candidateAt age 12, Richard St. Paul was in social studies class wondering how he could make the world a better place. “Something told me, ‘Become an elected official,’” he recalls. At home, he leafed through World Book Encyclopedia to a section on members of U.S. Congress and the inspiration took. A decade later, he was a White House intern. “That was pretty awesome,” says St. Paul about his days at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “I most remember the clocks in the Situation Room, which were …
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