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JACKIE BIRNBAUM
Resilience, Humor, and
A Little Magic
by Allison Petty
Nobody ever remembers the whole sonnet
attached to the Statue of Liberty.
It is the lament of Jacalyn Birnbaum, a
member at Nadler Pritikin & Mirabelli LLC
who can recite Emma Lazarus’ “The New
Colossus” with obvious passion and energy.
Birnbaum views the Statue of Liberty not just
as a patriotic symbol but a role model, a
compassionate and nonjudgmental figure she
seeks to emulate in her family law practice.
“Lady Liberty is not telling people they are
dysfunctional. She’s not telling people what
they did wrong, that they’re too fat, that they
didn’t do this, didn’t do that, or should have
done something else.” Birnbaum says.
“All The Lady does is stand there and say,
‘You know what? It’s fine. With all your
imperfections, it’s just fine. Go get busy.’”
Getting busy has never been a problem for
the 60-year-old Birnbaum, who started law
school when she was 37 and has built a niche
practice as a frequently appointed child
representative and guardian ad litem for
children in divorce and family law cases.
‘Swan Dive’ Into Law
Birnbaum always wanted to be a lawyer.
Her father, Herbert F. Friedman, was an
attorney and his work always seemed exciting
to Birnbaum.
She graduated from George Washington
University in 1972 with a degree in political
science. During her junior and senior years,
Birnbaum worked as an aide to Congressman
Phil Crane. She thought about attending law
school after graduating from college, but times
were different then.
“The women in Washington at that time —
the most brilliant women in the world—were
still getting coffee. It’s incredible that young
women have the choices they have now,
because those choices sure weren’t there in
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1972,” Birnbaum says. “I decided, well, you
know what, the pioneers can go be pioneers.
I’m going to go get married and have my kids.”
And that’s what she did. Birnbaum has
been married for 38 years to her husband,
Marc, and they have two children and two
grandchildren. When their daughter was in
high school and Birnbaum was 37, she
decided it was time to pursue her dream of
becoming a lawyer.
Of course, the decision didn’t come without
its share of anxiety.
“I was terrified to fail and I was terrified to
succeed, and I didn’t know what to do,” she
says. “So I figured, all right, sometimes you
just have to take a swan dive into life, and
that’s it. And I’ll figure it out.”
She did figure it out and graduated from
DePaul University Law School in 1992. She
joined the firm now known as Berger Schatz
and remained there for nine- plus years before
starting at Nadler in 2000.
An Unusual Approach
Birnbaum says her niche practice
representing children is fueled by her belief
that they are all heroes. She strives to treat
them with sensitivity but is disgusted by the
thought of pitying her clients as if they were
weak, wilting flowers. The only deep security
in life, she says, is resilience.
“When people in the family are fragmented,
the kids rise to the occasion,” Birnbaum says.
“Understanding that is really a way to equip
them with the tools they need to get through
trauma the rest of their lives.”
Her partner, James B. Pritikin, says it’s not
unusual to walk by Birnbaum’s toy-filled office
and see her sitting on the floor with a child. In
the 15 years they have known each other,
Pritikin has faced Birnbaum as an opponent in
court and also represented clients whose
children were assigned to her.
“As an opponent, she’s a worthy advocate
for her client. She is knowledgeable. She is
perceptive beyond any lawyer I’ve ever dealt
with, to tell you the truth,” Pritikin says. “She
was a good, tough litigator but never took an
unreasonable position.”
Pritikin says Birnbaum’s unusual background
contributes to her abilities as a lawyer. Because
she started her legal career when she was 40,
Birnbaum brought maturity and rationality that
are sometimes missing from young attorneys’
skill palettes.
Birnbaum says her practice incorporates
humor, a little magic, and her belief that the most
powerful words in the English language are
“figure it out.” That resilience has been lost in
society’s move to portray pain as synonymous
with danger, she says.
“If you don’t have a toothache, you can die
from blood poisoning because you don’t have
any notice,” she says. “Danger is ‘run away.’
Danger is a saber-toothed tiger. But if you run
away from pain, how do you learn anything?
“So you have kids that are going out there
with — virtually — emotional AIDS because
they have not had a chance to develop a
resistance to anything,” Birnbaum says.
This is not to imply that she is insensitive.
Circuit Judge Edward R. Jordan says Birnbaum
has never failed to settle a case in the 15 years
he has been appointing her as a guardian, and
the high success rate comes as a result of her
empathy for the parties involved. She does
particularly well with cases involving angry
young parents, he says, because she talks to
them as if they are her family, as if their
children are her grandchildren.
As for her young clients, Birnbaum’s
allegiance to them is unquestionable, Jordan
says. “She makes me crazy,” he says
affectionately. “I have yet to have her come
back and not tell me that this is the most
beautiful, brightest kid she’s ever met in
her life.”
However, he also describes Birnbaum as
“hopelessly practical,” someone who takes no
prisoners and brings common sense to all her
cases, making her a favorite with all the judges
in the division.
‘Remarkable Sense of Humor’
Because Birnbaum waited until her children
were nearly grown before she started law
school, she says she did not face some of the
difficulties women lawyers encounter when
trying to balance work and family life. Now, she
seeks to mentor young women attorneys and
teach them not to be their own worst enemies.
Women, she says, want to be super-people.
They hate to say they cannot do something,
and they continually judge themselves by a
different standard than men. This is particularly
crucial in times of stress, when Birnbaum
theorizes that men and women revert to their
varied biological impulses.
“Men are designed to drop the buffalo.
That’s what they’re supposed to do. So they
don’t look to the right, they don’t look to the
left, they have unerring faith in their judgment,
that’s it. And once the buffalo’s down, it’s time
for them to put their feet up and have a beer,”
Birnbaum says.
Women, on the other hand, must figure out
what to do with the buffalo once it is down.
Birnbaum says this is infinitely more complex.
“Who do you feed? How do you preserve?
How do you know when the next one is
coming? All that other stuff they have to think
about, in a tapestry.”
“What happens is that women see more
because they see at a different level of
specificity, and I think that’s really biological,”
she says.
Such colorful metaphors fly freely in
conversation with Birnbaum, whose sterling
reputation in the Cook County Domestic
Relations Division is fed in part by what Jordan
calls her “remarkable sense of humor.” When
asked if he can recall an anecdote to describe
Birnbaum’s personality, Jordan immediately
begins to laugh.
“She’s a little bit nuts, a little bit crazy, which
I love and adore,” Jordan says as the preface
to his story.
“It was Halloween, the 31st. She shows up
in court wearing a full witch’s costume, green
facial makeup—she looked like she was right
out of Wicked,” he says. And while Jordan
cannot think of a single other attorney who
could get away with such a stunt, everyone
laughed with Birnbaum when she did it.
“She could get away with it in front of any
judge in this division and there’s not one
lawyer who would complain,” he says. That is
a testament to both to Birnbaum’s reputation
as an excellent, skilled lawyer and as a
remarkable, likable woman.
Perhaps it is also a sign that she has been
able to channel a little of what she says is the
power that built the country — the resilience
represented by her role model, the Statue
of Liberty.
“When you’re sitting there yearning to
breathe free—when you’re trying to get out of
the colossal emotional imprisonment of a
rotten marriage or the colossal emotional
imprisonment of trying to save two parents
that are in the middle of a real tough time,”
Birnbaum says, “if you can tap into that
(message): that you don’t have to hide and
that you’re a hero and I get it, that’s it.”
“It’s like you have nuclear power there. You
can make a bomb or you can make a power
plant. That’s the power of pain when it’s not
frozen. That’s why I love what I do.” ■
Jacalyn Birnbaum
Nadler Pritikin & Mirabelli LLC
130 East Randolph Street, 12th Floor
Chicago, Illinois 60601
312.861.4600
312.861.4666 fax
npmfamlaw.com
[email protected]
This article originally appeared in Leading Lawyers Network Magazine—Women’s Edition for 2010 and has been reprinted with permission. © 2010 Law Bulletin Publishing Co.