by Heather B.
Hayes
for Virginia Business December 2004
John
Lichtenstein has defended people charged
with murder, drug dealing
and white-collar crime. But 17 years of criminal
law practice have not made him cynical. He
cares about his clients. “We love the
people we work with, and we love the people
side of what we do,” says the 43-year-old
Roanoke native.
Such compassion translates
into a vigorous defense in a courtroom. That
is one reason why Lichtenstein and his young
firm increasingly are hired to represent
defendants in high-profile and complex criminal
cases. These defendants include Richard Burrow,
the former president of the D-Day Memorial
Foundation who stood trial twice on fraud
charges. The charges were dropped following
two trials in which both juries deadlocked
when trying to reach a verdict. A majority
of jurors voted for acquittal.
“John is a great listener,
and he has so much empathy for the person
he’s representing that juries really
pick up on that,” says Lichtenstein’s
partner John Fishwick. “By the time
the jury goes to deliberations, I think they
have a real sense of who the defendant is,
and that’s because John is so good
at conveying their strengths as a person.”
Lichtenstein’s outlook
on client relations can be traced to his
father, Barry, a Roanoke lawyer. “I
remember meeting many of his clients right
at our dinner table,” says Lichtenstein,
who has three sons of his own ages 7, 5 and
3. “My father loved his job so much
and the people he worked with that it was
just a natural move for me to follow.”
After
law school at the University of Virginia,
Lichtenstein took a job with
Bremner, Baber & Janus in Richmond. There
he worked with mentors Murray J. Janus and
Dennis Dohnal, learning the finer points
of trial preparation and cross-examination.
Today,
no one comes to court more prepared than
Lichtenstein, according
to Fishwick. “It’s one of John’s
greatest strengths as an attorney,” he
says. In fact, the firm’s decision
to take on a client rests on whether the
attorneys can prepare the case to Lichtenstein’s
standards. During the Burrow case, for example,
Lichtenstein and his team hired forensic
accounting specialists and several investigators
to help sort out complex financial details.
Such
preparation is also critical because Lichtenstein’s law firm — which
started in 1996 when Lichtenstein and Fishwick
merged their individual practices — doesn’t
limit itself to a specific type of case or
venue. The partners’ preference is
to try cases that involve serious charges
and complex details. Lichtenstein and his
partners have defended individuals and corporations
against state and federal charges and often
represent plaintiffs in catastrophic medical
and product liability civil suits.
“I think everything
we do benefits everything we do,” Lichtenstein
says. “Being so diverse and open gives
us great insight into how things work within
a particular field, whether it’s banking
or medicine, and great insight into how people
think and how they interact.”
Lichtenstein
hopes to keep doing more of the same. “My goal is
that I become a better lawyer and a better
trial lawyer, and that we as a firm continue
to better understand human nature and better
execute our role in the process,” he
says. “If we can do that, then we’ll
continue to be able to get the best results
possible for our clients.”
