Class Notes: Fall 2026

MICHAEL L. WEISSMAN remains busy in retirement, having recently served as a panel arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, conducted a four-day Zoom class for Pro- Sight Financial, and delivered numerous lectures at retirement facilities throughout the northern suburbs of Chicago.

CORDELL J. OVERGAARD wrote that he published a nonfiction book titled “Watching Things Change”: “The book covers part of my upbringing, my legal and business career, as well as changes that have occurred with the legal profession, newspaper publishing, and radio. It is also critical of the Supreme Court and our political system as well as problems such as income and wealth inequality and inadequate health care. There is a website at Watching Things Change.” Overgaard added that he also appears on an Elsa Kurt YouTube podcast.

COLLINS FITZPATRICK wrote: “It has been a good year. At the 44th Annual Law Society Luncheon of Saint Ignatius College Prep, I was awarded the Alumni Award for Excellence in the Field of Law. The Seventh Circuit Bar Association, at their Annual Dinner, gave me an Award for Lifetime Service to the Association. And on my fourth 70-mile bike Pat Mac Ride to raise money for pediatric cancer, I rode with our second son and oldest granddaughter. Next year we will have more Fitzpatricks ride.”

CORY AMRON was selected by the American Bar Association for a 2026 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award. Amron is co-founder and president of Women Lawyers On Guard Inc., a national nonprofit organization focused on sexual harassment, gender and workplace equity, and women’s health and reproductive rights. She retired from her intellectual property practice at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, where she was the first chair of its newly formed technology and intellectual property group and the first woman member of the Partner Compensation Committee.

BARRY GRAYNOR recently published a book titled “April 13” to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the death of his life partner, Renato, who committed suicide on that day in 2016. The book is about his suicide, what happened, and why. It is also about Barry and Renato’s loving and committed 35- year relationship. The book follows an earlier book on Renato’s drawings and paintings titled “The Drawings and Paintings of René Martinez Peña,” published in 2018.

HOWARD A. LEARNER received the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois’ and Federal Bar Association’s 2026 Pro Bono and Public Interest Award from Chief Judge Virginia Kendall at a ceremony in May. CEO and senior attorney of the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago, Learner was recognized for his work as lead counsel in successful federal court litigation on behalf of Chicago Southeast Side community organizations to stop the Army Corps of Engineers’ proposal to site a new toxic waste disposal landfill along the Lake Michigan shoreline in the Southeast Side environmental justice community that has long been overburdened by toxics pollution. In November 2025, he and his community group clients joined the Chicago Park District superintendent and other leading public officials to announce plans to remediate and transform the site into a new lakefront park for community residents and all Chicagoans to use and enjoy.

ROBERT GEORGE, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, and his teaching partner Cornel West have been named Distinguished Scholars of Civil Discourse by the National Humanities Center. The two are co-authors of “Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division.”

In April, JOSÉPHINE MOERMAN LL.M. became chief justice of the Constitutional Court of Belgium.

DAVID J. SEIPP, who retired as professor of law emeritus at Boston University in July 2024, is writing a volume of the Oxford History of the Laws of England for the period 1399 to 1483. In June, he delivered the annual lecture to the Selden Society, a society and publisher devoted to English legal history. The lecture was titled “Looking for the Rule of Law in Fifteenth-Century England.”

TAMA KIEVES wrote that she left her law practice with a corporate law firm to write, speak, and “coach others to live their most meaningful self-expression in career and life.” She has just published her fifth book, “Learning to Trust Yourself: Breaking Through the Blocks That Hold You Back” (St. Martin’s Essentials), and it became a #1 Amazon bestseller. She added, “Today I speak internationally and teach classes online helping lawyers and other high-achievers trust their inner genius instead of their limiting assumptions.”

JESSICA NEUWIRTH has published an updated book on the Equal Rights Amendment, “Equal Means Equal: The Case for Recognizing the ERA as the 28th Amendment.” She wrote, “The book includes a detailed letter from LARRY TRIBE [’66] as one of its appendices, supporting the case — as does the American Bar Association, whose resolution on this is also in the appendices.” Neuwirth is the Rita E. Hauser Director of the Human Rights Program at Roosevelt House/Hunter College. She is also a co-founder of the ERA Coalition.

This year SANDY GRANNUM, a business litigation partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, became the Florham Park, New Jersey, office leader. Concentrating on securities law and the securities industry, she represents clients including issuers, banks, brokerage firms, and hedge funds.

After chairing Paul Hastings’ employment practice in New York, MARC BERNSTEIN has become the head of employment at Wollmuth Maher & Deutsch.

SALLY HADDEN, a professor of history at Western Michigan University, received the Fulbright-University of Manchester Distinguished Scholar Award (Humanities) for 2026-2027. She will use the award to begin drafting a new book on early American legal history.

LARS NOAH, a professor of law at the University of Florida in Gainesville, wrote: “I was recently named the most impactful food and drug law scholar in the nation based on citation-based rankings compiled by HeinOnline and also ranked #15 on that site’s list of health law scholars.”

GLEN L. ABRAMSON has joined Blank Rome in Philadelphia as of counsel in the business litigation practice group. His practice focuses on issues at the intersection of technology and law, including privacy, artificial intelligence, biometric data, and digital surveillance.

ROBERT W. GIFFORD has joined Phelps in Dallas as a partner. He works with businesses and financial institutions across Texas and the southwestern United States in federal and state courts. Often these are plaintiffs seeking to recoup losses from fraud, professional negligence, and other serious commercial misconduct. He was previously with the former boutique Johnston Clem Gifford.

ROSS E. VISELMAN, a former State Bar of California prosecutor who also served as senior counsel for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has joined BD&J in Los Angeles as chief legal and ethical compliance officer and general counsel.

LOREN KESSLER HIGGINS was named executive partner of Holland & Knight’s San Francisco office earlier this year and also co-leads the firm’s health care finance team. Her practice focuses on real estate and health care finance.

DAVID BIGGE wrote: “In January 2026, I resigned from the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser to join Wordstone Dispute Resolution as a partner and open its Washington, D.C., office. My 16 years at State was incredibly fulfilling, as chief of investment arbitration, delegate to the U.N. Sixth Committee and UNCITRAL Working Group III, U.S. agent to the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, and deputy agent and counsel for the United States at the International Court of Justice, among other portfolios. I’m thrilled to join Wordstone to continue my work in investment arbitration, commercial arbitration, interstate disputes, and public international law.”

Brinkley Morgan partner JODI FURR COLTON is now chair of the firm’s Family Law Department and leads its family law practice, which serves clients and families throughout South Florida. She focuses exclusively on complex family law matters, including divorce, equitable distribution, parental responsibility (i.e., custody), and prenuptial agreements. She previously practiced at large firms in New York, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis.

SHVETA KAKAR LL.M., a partner in the Taxation and Wealth Planning Department at Fox Rothschild, was honored by Crain’s New York Business as an attorney who is “leading the work that keeps systems functioning and rights protected” in New York. She was touted for her efforts on advising The City College of New York on the merger of its two longstanding and separate foundations into a single entity, the new Foundation for City College. At Fox Rothschild, she provides counsel on all aspects of a nonprofit’s life cycle, from incorporating and obtaining tax-exempt status, to governance, compliance, and transactional matters covering major events in corporate life. She also conducts investigations and litigates on their behalf.

LAUREN KELLER KATZENELLENBOGEN has joined IP boutique Friedland Cianfrani in Irvine, California, as a senior litigation partner. She continues to focus her practice on patent, trademark, trade secrets, and copyright litigation. Friedland Cianfrani was co-founded by MICHAEL FRIEDLAND ’91 in 2023.

BRADLEY NASH was elected as a fellow of the American College of Coverage Counsel, an association of insurance coverage attorneys. A partner at Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney in New York, he represents corporate policyholders in high-stakes insurance coverage disputes and other parties in complex commercial litigation.

Earlier this year JASON RABBITT-TOMITA joined Shartsis Friese as a partner in the corporate group. Prior to that, he’d been head of M&A legal for Broadcom Inc. He has led M&A and related transactions across the technology spectrum, including those involving artificial intelligence, cloud-based security services, drones, and video technologies.

MEGAN L. GREER joined the Washington, D.C., office of Bracewell this summer as a senior counsel in its government enforcement and investigations practice. Previously, she’d spent more than five years at the FBI, leading the agency’s congressional oversight response and serving in senior litigation roles in the Office of the General Counsel, and a decade as counsel in an international law firm’s congressional investigations and litigation practice. In another position in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legislative Affairs, Greer led the department’s oversight response following the 2018 midterm elections.

MICHELE “MIKE” MATERNI LL.M. S.J.D. ’16 is now a partner at Brithem, a New York-based trial firm founded in September 2025, where he focuses on high-leverage financial litigation and investigations. Before joining Brithem, he practiced at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York.

“I am proud to have completed eight years (!) in service to Georgia’s eighth largest school district,” wrote ERICA ELIZABETH (HARRISON) ARNOLD, “serving more than 41,000 students, expanding across 55 school and program campuses, and operating under a $700M public budget.” In this time, Arnold added, she has served as an in-house attorney under three board-appointed superintendents of schools and guided 19 chief officers and deputy superintendents, more than 25 departments, and some 220 administrators through evolving regulatory and political landscapes. She wrote that her primary responsibilities continue to include compliance with equal educational opportunity/nondiscrimination laws, student privacy protections, public contracting, due process safeguards in disciplinary proceedings, and the interplay of special education rights under IDEA and Section 504 with day-to-day operational practices. She shared her “most notable professional events” as designing and navigating Return to Campus playbooks and operational stabilizations during the COVID-19 pandemic followed by problem-solving in the face of a cyberattack from an international threat actor. Arnold continues to raise a family in Atlanta and says her most fond travels have included Chongqing, China; literary England (Bath); southern South Carolina (Hilton Head); and her new favorite, Curaçao.

MAURENE COMEY has joined Patterson Belknap as a partner in its litigation department. She focuses her practice on high-stakes white-collar defense and investigations and complex civil litigation. Prior to joining Patterson Belknap, Comey spent almost a decade as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, where she most recently served as senior trial counsel.

ANKITA RITWIK has been a new partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., this year, focusing on international arbitration and arbitration- adjacent litigation, including enforcement of foreign arbitral awards and judgments.

ELIZA FINLEY has been promoted to partner at Susman Godfrey in Los Angeles. She represents plaintiffs and defendants in complex litigation, clients ranging from large, well-known corporations to small businesses and individuals. Finley joined Susman Godfrey after completing an Equal Justice Works fellowship at the nonprofit law firm Public Counsel, where she provided free legal assistance in the areas of housing rights, benefits, and special education.

MATTHEW MCCULLOUGH has joined Faegre Drinker’s intellectual property group as a partner in the San Francisco office. He represents clients in intellectual property litigation, with a focus on high-tech patent and trade secrets litigation involving technologies such as AI, cloud services and infrastructure, telecom, and network security.

Earlier this year ABRAHAM RUDY was promoted to partner at Fried Frank. He represents borrowers and sponsors, as well as lenders and arrangers, in a wide variety of financing transactions, focusing on financings for private investment funds.

J. MAX ROSEN, a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, focuses his practice on commercial litigation, including mass tort litigation, strategic advising, insurance, and appeals. He also maintains a significant pro bono practice, focused on LGBTQ+ rights.

TRENTON J. VAN OSS has been a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., since earlier this year. He is an appellate litigator who focuses on subject matters including data privacy, class actions, securities, and telecommunications.

After graduating from HLS, LAWRENCE DAVID LL.M. returned to practice law with Canada’s federal Department of Justice and, later, the Senate of Canada. David also began teaching law at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, in addition to authoring “Stare Decisis, The Charter and the Rule of Law in the Supreme Court of Canada” (LexisNexis, 2020), based on his LL.M. thesis. He has since entered private practice and also founded the Public Interest Litigation Institute, specializing in appellate public interest litigation. He has appeared as counsel in 10 appeals heard by the Canadian Supreme Court, in addition to various Canadian trial and appellate courts, litigating in both English and French.

CAYMAN C. MITCHELL was elevated to partnership at Jenner & Block in New York on Jan. 1, 2026. They focus on legal issues involving software and other technology, with a core practice of intellectual property disputes, and represent clients in the entertainment and technology industries — including video game developers, software developers, and record labels. Mitchell’s pro bono practice includes litigating on LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, and copyright.

TING CHEUNG LL.M. is now senior litigation counsel at Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight. She works in the Washington, D.C., office and focuses her practice on employment law, whistleblower and qui tam matters, and complex civil litigation, including wrongful death and sexual violence claims. Since 2020, she has served as an expert for the World Bank Group’s Women, Business and the Law project. She was an East Asian Legal Studies Visiting Scholar at HLS from 2020 to 2022.

MALORIE KANAAN LL.M. was awarded a Clarendon Scholarship from the University of Oxford to pursue a D.Phil. in law at The Queen’s College.