About Erik Lundegaard
Erik Lundegaard has been a senior editor at Super Lawyers since 2005 and its editor in chief since 2013—during which time the magazine has won close to 100 journalism awards around the country. His freelance writing has been published by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, MSNBC.com, The Christian Science Monitor, The Seattle Times and The Believer, among others. He has a B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota, studied Mandarin Chinese in Taipei, Taiwan, and lives in Seattle, Washington, where he is a long-suffering Seattle Mariners fan. In his spare time, he is working on a book about the movies of James Cagney.
Articles written by Erik Lundegaard
The George Foreman Interview
How one attorney helped Foreman reclaim the heavyweight championship of the world and make a mint via a home-shopping productI had the privilege of interviewing George Foreman for a cover feature on entertainment attorney Henry Holmes for the 2005 edition of Southern California Super Lawyers magazine. Foreman, generous with his time and stories, was Holmes’ client on many fronts. Holmes negotiated sitcom deals for him, cleared a path for Foreman to fight for the heavyweight championship against Michael Moorer in 1994 at age 42, and—the biggest purse of all—negotiated a joint venture on something called “The …
The French Dispatch
Between helping startups and advising Fortune 500s, Senami Houndete Craft teaches at Alliance FrançaiseSenami Houndete Craft has a thing for west coasts. Her father was from Benin in West Africa, she grew up in Vendée on the west coast of France, and she now lives and practices in San Diego. “The far west is always very attractive to me—with the freedom and the pioneer aspect of things,” she says with a soupçon of a French accent. “Because of how I grew up, I’m really attracted to the ocean and wanted to offer that to my family. Being a mom of three little kids, I really want them to …
… All the Bobbles
John Scheerer wears his Dodgers fandom on his bookshelvesIn a well-manicured cemetery near LAX, two men get out of their cars and greet one another. It’s obvious they’re strangers, and it’s equally obvious a deal is going down. Two packages, each the size of half a shoebox, are exchanged, and then the men bid farewell and return to their cars and drive off. A drug deal? Whistleblower documents? Try bobbleheads. “I probably started collecting when I was in high school,” says John Scheerer, an estate and trust litigator at Sacks Glazier …
The Case of Shohei’s Translator
Michael Freedman repped the man who nearly sank the Dodgers seasonMichael Freedman became a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers at exactly the wrong time—the year after a hobbled Kirk Gibson hit a shocking walkoff home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, which the underdog Dodgers would win in five games. “I just missed that,” he says. “And then it was decades before they made it back to the World Series.” In fact, it was nearly three decades, 2017, and then the Dodgers lost to a Houston Astros team later accused of cheating. “Another intersection …
New York's Times
At Herrick Feinstein, the past is presentSeveral years ago, real estate attorney Belinda Schwartz was walking a client and his grandchildren through the offices at Herrick Feinstein in Midtown, showing them the collection of historical New York City artifacts the firm has curated since the late 1970s. Standing before an IRT ticket box from 1904, one of the grandchildren asked Schwartz the obvious: “Where’s the iPhone thing to just pay?” When it was explained how the IRT worked back then, the child motioned to the ancient box and …
The Case of the Russian Ph.D.
Todd Clement on why he and his partner intake every single caseThe two lawyers in our firm personally intake clients. Either myself or my partner intakes every single case. Because you never know. Years ago, I got a phone call from a young man with a thick Russian accent. He told me that he and his dog were walking in a crosswalk when they were hit by a drunk driver. His dog was killed and the man’s leg was completely mangled as a result of the crash. He’d talked to three other lawyers, and each one said he just needed to do this by himself. The longer …
All The World Is Waiting for You
What Wonder Woman represents to immigration attorney Heather Poole and her clientsThe client in her office was a young, gay man from Thailand whose husband, a U.S. citizen, refused to sponsor him for a green card; he wanted to hold that over him. This was a spouse who was not just controlling but abusive. “The young man comes into my office and tells me about this,” remembers Heather L. Poole, an immigration attorney in Pasadena. “And I say, ‘Let’s see if we can’t find some friends who have seen how your husband treats you. As long as you think they’re willing …
Son of a Son of a Rabbi
Why Harry Nelson chose law over the family business; how it still infuses his practiceWhen Harry Nelson graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1994, the family joke was, “So when are you going to start rabbinical school?” Nelson, a health care law practitioner at Nelson Hardiman, comes from a long line of not only rabbis, but rabbis who first studied law. “My grandfather graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in the 1920s,” Nelson says. “He only decided to go to rabbinical school after realizing the law wasn’t what he was called to …
Tobacco Road
Dustin Whittenburg is collecting some of the most prized baseball cards in the worldBeware of what you don’t let your kids do. Dustin Whittenburg grew up in the 1980s in the Texas Panhandle, just outside of Amarillo, playing football. “That’s in the heart of Friday Night Lights country,” he says with a verbal shrug. “Everybody plays football.” He also collected cards, but leaned toward baseball more than football. “I always liked the history of baseball,” he explains. “And back then they would have card shows. eBay didn’t exist. Online auctions didn’t …
Notes from the Panda-Emic
Proud Usahacharoenporn dealt with isolation through artHow much of a time warp did the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic put us through—when every day in March 2020 seemed like a week? Proud Usahacharoenporn is trying to recall when she wrote her book, Panda-Emic!, and thinks it was right in the middle of the 2020 lockdown. “Probably in summer—around June,” she says. Then she searches for the answer. “Oh, looks like April, actually.” A business litigator at Rutan & Tucker in Irvine, Usahacharoenporn is a social person who’s …
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