About Michael Y. Park
Michael Y. Park is a freelance journalist whose work has been published in New York, The New York Times, People and LIFE. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from New York University.
Articles written by Michael Y. Park
Going the Distance
As a boxer, bricklayer or family lawyer, Michael A. Gill has ‘all the guts in the world’When Michael A. Gill walks into a room, the first thing you notice are his arms. Thick as oak branches, they stretch the sleeves of his old gray T-shirt, the faded red letters of the word “Rutgers” distorted by his broad chest. As pretty much anyone who knows him will tell you, he doesn’t look like a lawyer. No one expected him to become one. Gill grew up in a family of six children in Ocean City, N.J., raised by a single mother after their father left the family when Michael was 4 years …
Unimpeachable
Ross Garber is an expert at saving elected officialsIn June 2009, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford vanished without a trace for six days. His closest aides, political allies and the lieutenant governor were at a complete loss when reporters asked where the state’s chief executive was. Sanford’s own wife and four children didn’t know where he was—and Father’s Day came and went without a call from the staunchly conservative family man. Legal and political experts began to pose questions about the constitutional consequences of the …
Judge Pollack’s Boys
Thomas Kavaler, Peter Wang and other lawyers pay homage to their mentor“Did you tell him the 2nd Circuit story?” Thomas Kavaler asks Peter Wang. “Yeah, I told him the 2nd Circuit story,” Wang answers. “Then I have two other stories to tell you,” Kavaler says … before launching into the 2nd Circuit story anyway. Five minutes later, Wang admits, “I told you a different 2nd Circuit story.” The two attorneys, sitting in the conference room at Foley & Lardner overlooking Central Park, couldn’t be more different. Kavaler is an archconservative. …
The Honor of the Force
State trooper-turned-attorney David J. MacMain now serves and protects his former comradesIn November 1986, Pennsylvania State Trooper David J. MacMain was on duty on the rural outskirts of the town of Chatham when he noticed a Mustang zoom by above the speed limit. He hit his siren and attempted to pull the car over. It seemed like a routine stop. MacMain fully expected to be home that evening in time for his 23rd birthday dinner with his wife, Lisa. Then the Mustang roared off. The birthday dinner would have to wait. MacMain slammed the accelerator pedal to the floor and gave …
The Compassionate Lawyer
Linda Ershow-Levenberg has made a career of helping the elderlyLinda Ershow-Levenberg’s story begins not in a courtroom or even in law school, but in a Russian shtetl in the first decade of the 20th century. A young woman received word that she was to travel to America and reunite with her husband, who had gone to the New World to start a new life for his family. Her home was to be in a bustling metropolis, teeming with immigrants who had dreams of riches and opportunities. It was called Newark, New Jersey. But after Fanny Denburg arrived, her husband …
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, Class Is Now in Session
Julia Huston brings an educator’s eye to the lawFor Julia Huston, standing in front of a room full of people and delving into esoteric matters that only she has a full grasp of seems only natural. But then again, we’re talking about someone who traded a classroom for a courtroom––and used her skills as a former educator to win the biggest case in the musical-instrument industry, earning her client a whopping $20.7 million. Not that, growing up, she ever expected to be working with millions. Huston, who was born in Ohio, moved to New …
The Reality Check
The four commandments of Debra RaskinEllen was in workplace hell. A publisher at a magazine, where she’d worked for 17 years, she’d been hospitalized for seven weeks because of a difficult pregnancy. When she returned to the office, she found herself persona non grata, excluded from key meetings, scolded harshly for inconsequential minutiae, and snowed under by demeaning memos from her boss. “I was a pariah. I was undercut at every turn,” Ellen says. “I came home crying every night.” When she tried to hire a lawyer to …
Dianne Elderkin Finds Her Voice
How a shy chemistry student became a commanding and record-breaking patent lawyerOn June 29, 2009, a Texas jury awarded Centocor Ortho Biotech Inc., a Pennsylvania subsidiary of health sciences giant Johnson & Johnson, $1.67 billion in a patent infringement case against Abbott Laboratories. It was the largest judgment of its kind in history. One would assume that the lawyer who pulled that off must be one hard-driving, scenery-chewing, take-no-prisoners type, right? Actually, it was Dianne Elderkin. The middle child of a civil engineer and a homemaker in …
Smack Down!
Jared Bartie controls the mayhem for WWECome hell or high water, Jared Bartie was going to have a career in sports. “As a child, my basketball hero was Dr. J, though whether I played similarly to the good doctor [Julius Erving] is up for debate,” Bartie laughs from a conference room at the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) headquarters in Stamford, Conn. “I played basketball with All-Americans in high school. But if you went back to Cambridge basketball junkies, they’d remember the other guys, not me.” His former teammate …
LaSallian Tradition
The trickiest cases, like the mystery involving insolvent software company AremisSoft, find their way to Joseph LaSala’s deskJoseph LaSala couldn’t believe what he was seeing, or to be more exact, what he wasn’t seeing. In 2002, he was court-appointed to serve as the liquidating trustee of a U.K.-based software company called AremisSoft. It was run by two flashy entrepreneurs from Cyprus, Roya Poyiadjis and Lycourgos Kyprianou. They claimed, among other things, that they had a contract to automate Bulgaria’s health care system, were running offices all over the world, employed 535 people, and had hundreds of …
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