Marna Berkman

By: Marna Berkman

Yesterday I received a beautiful, heartfelt email of gratitude from Brooklyn's Reverend Herbert Daughtry, National Presiding Minister of the House of the Lord Churches located on Atlantic Avenue. He was responding to an email I had sent him on Tuesday. I will not post the Reverend's response email, but I will say that it was beautifully written and expressed and he cc'ed his response and my email to Bruce Ratner and the staff of Forrest City Ratner and he sent warm regards to my father Charles Berkman.

By: Marna Berkman

I am not a typical lawyer. I hate controversy and confrontation, but at the same time, I love to argue and fight to support my client’s rights as long as it takes and as far as I have to go to do my absolute all for them. Sometimes, as my husband, my partner in life, and, in a sense, my law practice is quick to point out, I go so far that I forsake my own business interest in the fight. People make a lot of lawyer jokes, painting lawyers in a bad, greedy light, but the lawyers in the jokes are extremely far from my own reality.

By: Marna Berkman

I’ve basically spent my whole morning, and now part of my afternoon, waiting around in court. I left at about 1:30 so the judge could break for lunch, came back at 2:15, and now it’s 3:00pm.

We saw the judge a little while ago, the defense lawyer is waiting for a call back from his insurance adjuster, and here I sit in “Supreme Kings” waiting…When I was younger and a new lawyer, the waiting drove me crazy. Now, I’m used to it, and as of today, I sit and write.

By: Marna Berkman 
Originally written in September 2011.

Last week, I snuck out of my office for a Monday matinee showing of I Don’t Know How She Does It with Sarah Jessica Parker. I say that I “snuck” out of the office because running a busy Brooklyn law firm and being the mother of six children below the age of 12 leaves little time for anything, much less seeing a movie legitimately. For that matter, it is also hard to read a book legitimately—a few years and a few children ago my sister sent me the pink hardcover novel that the movie is based on and I toted it back and forth to court and on vacation for months, never having time to read more than a page here and two pages there. I rationalized my mid-day matinee frolic by telling myself that the film was playing almost directly across from my office on Livingston Street—surely a sign that I deserved a two hour break.

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