About Ross Pfund
Ross Pfund is the managing editor of Super Lawyers. He is the editor of the Minnesota, Colorado, Massachusetts, Louisiana and Southwest magazines. An award-winning editor and writer with more than 20 years of experience, he has a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota. His work has also appeared in the Star Tribune and the Norman County Index. As a child, he knew he was cut out for a career in journalism because he never once stuck his hand into his father’s printing press.
Articles written by Ross Pfund
When Life Gives You Lemon Law …
How Amy Bennecoff makes lemonade for her clientsAmy Bennecoff has a lot on her plate. The attorney with Kimmel & Silverman, also known as “the lemon law firm,” appears regularly in court on behalf of clients in lemon law cases and other consumer issues. She’s licensed—and actively practices—in six states, including Tennessee and Wyoming. And she’s appeared on NBC and on local television and radio programs to discuss legal issues. Then again, Bennecoff’s used to answering tough questions before a crowd. “I’ve been in …
Building It From Scratch
Elder law solo practitioner Claire E. Lewis on the Affordable Care Act, dealing with end-of-life issues, and her involvement in establishing the practice area in IndianaQ: What was it that first got you interested in the law? A: There are a couple of factors. I was always interested in elder law, which really wasn’t even an identified field back when I was entering law school. After my grandfather died, my grandmother came to live with my family. So I grew up with an older adult in the household and I loved dealing with my grandmother, talking to her and talking to her friends. She’d have a bridge club over. And I just loved listening to the stories. As I …
Fowler Libre
International lawyer George J. Fowler III of Fowler Rodriguez speaks freely on Fidel Castro, maritime disasters and intestinal fortitudeQ: I understand that you were a refugee from Cuba to America when you were 9 years old. A: On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro takes over the island and he starts killing people, and [my family fled to the U.S.] I spent the rest of my life building up this practice here and also spent a lot of time trying to bring him to justice. I’ve tried to get indictments to him in many countries throughout the world, including Spain and the United States; tried to nab him a couple times. We almost got him …
Diving In
How Loyola law student Laura Diven plunged into the issues facing LA’s HIV/AIDS communityLaura Diven was looking to take the next step after coming off a May 2011 internship at Lambda Legal, the nation’s largest LGBT legal services organization. “It took me out of my bubble of personal experience and made [the HIV/AIDS] community a personal responsibility for me,” she says. After stints at the California Courts of Appeal and the California attorney general’s office, she was preparing to apply for an internship with the HIV & AIDS Legal Services Alliance (HALSA) when the …
Looking Beyond Aqualung
Providence-based family law attorney Tim Conlon on computer crime in the ’80s, suing the Roman Catholic Church as a Catholic, and how society can help prevent institutional child abuseQ: Apparently you worked in computers during the early part of your career. A: It was in the mid-to-late ‘80s. I did computer crime prosecutions for a while. At the time, it had nothing to do with anything, although it ultimately turned out to be relatively useful in terms of the digital forensic work that I now do. Q: That had to have been on the leading edge of computer work. A: There was no computer crime unit in the Rhode Island State Police at that point. There were people doing …
The Persistence of Mary Anne Sedey
The St. Louis-based employment litigator speaks on pushing through discovery, her voir dire strategy and giving legal advice to Thurgood MarshallQ: Human Resource Executive magazine named you one of the top 10 plaintiff’s attorneys to fear the most. A: They did. Q: Seems like a dubious honor in their eyes. A: Great honor in mine. Q: What first got you interested in the law? A: I’m kind of a child of the ‘60s, and I was very involved in the women’s movement as a young woman, and I wanted work where I could do something about the status of women, and also make a living, and so I was very interested in the law. That …
Expecting the Unexpected
Duluth-based defense attorney David Keegan of Keegan Law Office on authenticity, courtroom surprises and representing the man who turned a recliner into a vehicleQ: What brought you to Duluth? A: I grew up in the Twin Cities area, and I went to William Mitchell College. A lot of the folks that I went to law school with at that time [were] second-career type folks. So I got a chance to bounce off a lot of people who had a lot more life experience, and that opened my eyes up to different areas of law. One of the people that I met there was originally from Duluth, and my younger brother had a lot of contacts in Duluth and I always liked the place …
Fast Track
Richard W. Hughes of Rothstein, Donatelli, Hughes, Dahlstrom, Schoenburg & Bienvenu in Santa Fe shares his thoughts on Indian law, the Peter MacDonald case, and getting a legal services job before he had his law degreeQ: What got you interested in the law? A: I was one of those totally naïve sorts who went to law school thinking, “Oh, I don’t want to really be a lawyer, I’d just like to have the background of the law degree and go into government or something.” I got to my third year and I was actually looking for a legal job; I was also in the midst of a little tussle with my draft board at the time for my suitability for military service. So I ended up sort of by accident taking a job on the …
From Bailiff to Bar
Trial lawyer Nathaniel Lee of Lee & Fairman on getting his foot in the door, President Barack Obama and the year he had 24 cases lined upQ: I understand you served on President Obama’s Presidential Advisory Board this year. A: For the last couple years, actually. It’s a citizen group where you don’t have any real power, but you get to meet with the president about three or four times a year. He’s got probably a dozen or so of these groups. … This president is probably the most inclusive president who has ever held the Oval Office. Q: What are your thoughts on the result of the last presidential election? A: My …
Fundamental Fairness
Trey McCowan of Kean Miller in Baton Rouge speaks on the role of the judicial system after natural disasters, the quality of Louisiana’s environmental litigators and working to improve the quality of representation for post-conviction cases.Q: Your firm and Liskow & Lewis recently won an award for teaming up to represent death row inmate Jimmy Ray Williams. How did you get involved? A: There was a gap in the law with respect to funding capital post-conviction cases—funding for lawyers, funding for experts. Another issue was just a lack of lawyers [taking these cases]. A lot of them were being handled by public defenders and an entity called the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana. We were approached in conjunction …
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