Mac Booker, Bernstein-Burkley Litigation Associate, believes that the best phrase to describe himself as a lawyer is, “Dum Spiro Spero,” which translated from Latin means, “While I breathe, I hope.” This positive outlook comes through in Mac’s transparency with clients.
“It is important to me not only that we are acting in your best interest,” he says, “but that you understand what we are doing on your behalf and why we are doing it.”
Mac’s legal focus is often on cases that have a strange or unexpected element, like whether a beneficiary of a trust can be stripped of their beneficiary status because they seek divorce or whether there is harm in the context of an abuse of process claim. Mac has been involved in bringing questions like these before the Pennsylvania and federal courts and getting answers to them that serve his clients’ interests as well as the interests of justice.
In addition to breathing curiosity and heart into his work, Booker also enjoys breathing fresh air as an avid cyclist who bikes to the office most days. However, when he leaves his desk, Mac considers his biggest accomplishment to be “having left my clients better off for working with me than they would have had they not.”
Focus:
Mac is an associate in the firm’s Litigation practice group, with a focus on:
- Employment
- Civil Rights
- Media Access
- Shareholder disputes
- Contract disputes
- Trust reformation
- Oil and gas
- Defamation
- False Claims Act
- Dragonetti Act/Abuse of Process claims
Background:
Before he went to law school, Mac spent a number of years working on political campaigns before discovering that he loved working with clients to find creative solutions to complex and time-sensitive problems. “The law was an obvious next step,” he says.
- University of Pittsburgh (B.A. 2002)
- University of Pittsburgh School of Law (J.D. 2015)
- National Trial Advocacy College, University of Virginia (2017)
Distinctions:
- Allegheny County Bar Association
- Arts and the Law Committee, Vice-Chair
- Committee for Diversity and Inclusion, past Co-Chair
- Civil Litigation Section
- LGBT Rights Committee
- 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club, Secretary
- Brew House Association, Board Member
Admissions:
- Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
- United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania
- United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit