An Israeli immigrant who spent his first eight years of life in Cairo, Moscow, and Tel-Aviv and learned English at the age of nine after a year as a refugee, I am currently an associate at Reed Smith LLP. I regularly represent and advise corporate clients on bankruptcy and other insolvency matters as well as issues related to the Uniform Commercial Code. Within and without the private sector, I have gained extensive experience in banking and finance law, complex commercial litigation, business reorganizations, creditors’ and debtors’ rights under federal and state law, and constitutional litigation at the trial and appellate levels.
Since 2014, I have routinely written on bankruptcy and restructuring matters and federal procedure. Nine judicial opinions have cited seven of my academic articles, and recent appellate and trial court briefs made much of three. Multiple scholarly articles have quoted or discussed no less than five, and several law firms have picked up the same number. In addition, more than ten have been incorporated into and highlighted in various treatises, including Collier on Bankruptcy, Collier Lending Institutions and the Bankruptcy Code, Sutherland Statutes and Statutory Construction, and Thompson on Real Property, and manuals, such as the American Law Reports, Collier Bankruptcy Practice Guide, Freedom Information Disclosure, and New Jersey Practice Series. In 2018, the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges not only lauded one academic exposition but also based an entire educational session on it, and the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Oklahoma constructed a CLE around another. The Congressional Research Service referenced one of my shortest co-authored works, and the American Bankruptcy Institute featured one piece in a popular webinar and recognized a second as among that year’s best compositions, at the tail end of 2019. Beginning in early 2020, my writings have also generated a steady parade of queries for expert guidance from sundry government agencies and nonprofit organizations.
Prior to joining Reed Smith, I held a variety of legal and non-legal positions, including five clerkships. For a total of three years, I worked as a legal adviser to a small fund and an associate at Troutman Sanders LLP as well as counsel to a coterie of mobile app developers. In between the first and latter two posts, I served as a law clerk to United States Bankruptcy Judges in the Eastern District of New York and the Middle District of Florida, a United States Bankruptcy Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of California, and two United States District Judges in the Middle District of Louisiana and the Eastern District of New York. Before I commenced my legal career, I taught English at two Texas middle schools in Houston and Brownsville, Texas, as a member of Teach for America’s Rio Grande Valley Corps and conducted scientific research at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Israeli government even took notice, admittedly brief, of the latter.
I received my J.D. from Harvard Law School, where I received accolades as a student attorney at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and joined the staff of two secondary journals, and my B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania, where I graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with highest honors in two majors (English and Politics, Philosophy, and Economics) and won awards for my research and writing abilities.