Celebrating Justice

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The phone rang three times before six-thirty in the morning. Mu'min Islam almost let it go — and the case on the other end became the one he still measures every other one by. Mu'min Islam did not set out to be a trial lawyer. At Temple University's business school, he noticed how many corporate executives held law degrees and saw law school as a runway toward the C-suite. Graduatin...

Some trial lawyers walk into a courtroom hoping they are ready. Rich Ruohonen walks in the way a world-level athlete steps onto the ice — because he has already thrown the shot a hundred times before it matters. Rich Ruohonen never set out to be a trial lawyer. Raised to never give in and to win every argument, he drifted toward the courtroom after a high-school mock trial, briefly imagined a care...

For years, the defense insisted the case was worth $10,000. Kate Feroleto believed her client — and the truth — were worth far more, and she spent four years proving it. Kate Feroleto did not have a single aha moment. She grew up inside the practice of law in Buffalo, New York — her father a plaintiff’s trial lawyer raised on the city’s West Side, her mother a defense attorney who later became a j...

He was seventeen when a torn meniscus ended a professional soccer career in Ukraine — and put him on a plane to a country whose language he did not yet speak. Boris Grushko has been building on that improbable start ever since. Boris Grushko, a Brooklyn-based personal injury trial lawyer whose road to the courtroom ran through two arenas most attorneys never see: a professional soccer pitch and a...

As a kid, Denis Delja wanted to be a gunslinger — the man with no name who lives by his own code and always ends up fighting for the weaker guy against the bully or the land baron.  He grew out of the cowboy stage, but never out of the ethos. Delja found his way to that fight through the courtroom. Raised in the San Fernando Valley on the classic Westerns of the 1950s and '60s, he was drawn t...

Jason Green never planned to be a trial lawyer. He grew up watching Perry Mason and LA Law with his father — a former civil rights attorney — and went to law school thinking he would practice law, not try cases.  Then a mandatory first-year moot court competition changed everything. He entered because it was required, barely tried, and kept advancing until he reached the round of eight. That was t...

When Alexis Bale was eleven, her sister told her — not entirely as a compliment — that she was good at arguing and should become a lawyer. She took it as one. In Episode 60 of "Celebrating Justice," the "newer" (or young, how ever you'd like) trial attorney at Breit Biniazan traces a path that started early and kept accelerating: dual-enrollment college classes at sixteen,...

Jason Doucette will tell you he doesn’t have a great origin story — no lawyers in the family, a pre-med track abandoned somewhere between organic chemistry and an intro-to-criminal-justice elective that happened to fit his schedule and happened to hold his attention. But origin stories, it turns out, are exactly what he’s built a career on telling. Now a Lead Trial Attorney at The Dominguez Firm i...

The most powerful advocates are often born from the most painful experiences. Sarah Klein knows this better than most. A survivor of Larry Nassar’s abuse and a trial lawyer who has dedicated her career exclusively to child sexual abuse civil cases, Sarah brings a perspective to her work that is unlike almost anyone else in the legal profession. Sarah grew up in Lansing, Michigan, in the late 70s a...

Rob Bilott never planned on any of this. He wanted to be an architect, maybe a city planner. It was his father — a retired Air Force officer who enrolled in law school chasing a dream of being Perry Mason — who nudged him toward the LSAT. He landed at Taft Law in Cincinnati in 1990 and spent eight years defending chemical companies. Then a West Virginia farmer named Wilbur Tennant called about dyi...

Mike “Pap” Papantonio didn’t set out to be a lawyer. He trained as a journalist, ready to chase revolutions abroad — until a conversation with the legendary Perry Nichols reframed the craft of trial work as storytelling grounded in literature, culture, and human truth. That idea stuck. So did Pap’s upbringing with working-class families across central Florida, people living paycheck to paycheck. I...

As a middle school track coach, she taught kids to breathe on the back stretch and relax their arms on the far turn. They won. More importantly, they believed in themselves.  Years later, a worn-down client sat across from her and, in a quiet handshake, asked a different question: Can I trust you? Ortega heard what wasn’t said and took an oath to care. That moment — that feeling — became her compa...

Michael Alder’s entry into plaintiff’s work wasn’t planned at all — it started in a tiny 700-person Louisiana town with preacher-teacher parents, took a surprising turn on a fraternity lawn, and ultimately led to a clerkship with a Mississippi Supreme Court justice who changed everything by sharing war stories after hours. That exposure to real trial practice, plus a single job offer from legendar...

Pasadena trial lawyer Michael S. Carrillo didn’t plan on following in his father’s footsteps. Growing up, he watched Luis Carrillo pour time and money into righteous, pro bono fights — even when the family struggled. The myth of guaranteed wealth in the law? He saw the opposite. But Michael found his way into the courtroom — and, eventually, into the work that now defines him: representing survivo...

“True advocacy starts and begins with a well-trained lawyer that is providing independent legal counsel in the best interest of the client, not in the best interest of shareholders or a corporation.” Lance K. Brubaker traces an uncommon arc — from oil-and-gas and creditors’ rights work to founding a boutique plaintiff practice focused on catastrophic injury cases. Early in his career, he says, the...

Trial lawyer Tom Scolaro of Scolaro Law P.C. shares why the motto “Hustle & Heart, Set Us Apart” isn’t marketing fluff for his firm, it’s operating instructions. Scolaro grew up in a blue-collar upstate New York town, the son of an immigrant truck driver who admired lawyers and pushed his kids to aim higher. Law school originally meant a prosecutor’s path (think Jack McCoy on “Law & Order”...

In this episode of “Celebrating Justice,” trial lawyer Daniel Schneiderman traces that arc from early Toastmasters triumphs and DA’s training to a deliberately client-first personal injury practice. Daniel’s candid about what actually fuels his fire: living the case alongside clients, from hospital to courthouse steps, and doing high-quality work at a deliberately capped caseload so he can be pres...

In this episode of “Celebrating Justice,” trial lawyer Jeremy Citron, founder and partner at The Hurt Boss , traces an unconventional path to the courtroom — from dreaming of becoming a Major League Baseball umpire to finding his calling in personal injury law. The journey starts with a nudge from his father to take the LSAT “as a fallback,” turns into early academic momentum in law school, and th...

From fraternity consultant to defense associate to plaintiff’s trial lawyer and now a solo personal injury attorney at Hudson Injury Law in New Mexico — Damon Hudson has taken the "scenic route" to meaningful advocacy. In this episode of "Celebrating Justice", he shares how a winding early career (including a brief stop in tax law) ultimately clarified what he wanted from the l...

Charleston trial lawyer Roy T. Willey IV traces a path from a skinny, freckled kid who hated seeing people pushed around to a courtroom advocate who measures success by the lives he can improve — not by the percentage of policy limits recovered. Raised largely by a single mom, Roy carried a simple vow into adulthood: don’t let people be taken advantage of . Roy describes his “trial ready process”...

Yale Spector, founder of Spector Law Group , was raised in a family of attorneys — his grandfather serving as a Hague-appointed legal officer after WWII, his parents both practicing in Baltimore, and his brother pursuing the same calling — Spector grew up at a dinner table where debate was constant and justice was considered a family responsibility. In this episode of "Celebrating Justice&quo...

From billion-dollar deals in Dubai to billion-dollar settlements in Texas, Murtaza Sutarwalla’s legal journey is anything but ordinary. In this episode of Celebrating Justice , Murtaza traces his path from elite corporate law to the frontlines of human trafficking litigation. Early in his career, he represented governments and major corporations, drafting M&A contracts and shaping foreign law...

In Episode 44 of "Celebrating Justice" , Alan Ripka — a seasoned New York trial lawyer whose career was shaped by personal tragedy — shares his remarkable journey. Growing up in Queens, Ripka was on track to become a doctor until his brother Robbie was killed in a ski accident just before graduating high school. The loss ignited a passion to advocate for others who couldn’t speak for the...

Justin Blitz never planned to be a trial lawyer. In fact, he swore he wouldn’t follow in his father’s footsteps. He spent his early career immersed in New York’s music scene — booking bands, promoting shows, and working for music legend Chris Blackwell. But after law school and a brief stint in entertainment law, he found the work uninspiring. As his mother had always told him, his greatest gift w...