“There is no better choice to co-chair the firm’s litigation department with Dan Segal…”
Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller announced today that John Summers has been appointed co-chair, alongside current chair Dan Segal, of the firm’s litigation department.
Summers is an accomplished complex commercial litigator with more than 25 years of experience representing clients in financial services, technology, real estate and manufacturing. He is also the East Coast Solicitor to the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges, where he counsels judges of the Court of Common Pleas on ethics matters raised by the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board. In addition to serving on the Board of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, Summers is Chair of The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a nationally recognized development finance corporation that puts capital and private initiative to work for the public good. TRF manages more than $700 million in capital and has made $1.3B in total investments to date.
“John is an extremely well respected and accomplished litigator. There is no better choice to co-chair the firm’s litigation department with Dan Segal,” said Mark Aronchick, firm Chair. “This change, along with other recent leadership changes, helps to further the firm’s long-term goal of thriving well beyond the generation of its founders.”
This announcement comes after the firm’s most recent leadership change in January 2014 when Mark Aronchick and Ronald Schiller were named, respectively, the firm’s Chair and Vice-Chair. These changes are all steps in the firm’s succession planning process under which key leadership roles in the firm will transition from the firm’s founders to the next generation of leaders.
“Dan Segal and I have worked closely together for 28 years and it is a pleasure and an honor to now co-chair the litigation department with him as we continue to build on the great leadership that he has put in place,” said Summers. “Together, we will ensure that the litigation department continues to be a source of outstanding legal counsel to our clients.”
Enthusiastically welcoming the move, Segal commented that “John brings a unique combination of energy, creativity and vision to the position.”
Summers is graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he served as an editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and was awarded the Mark E. Lefever Prize for Law and Economics. He received his BA,magna cum laude, from Wesleyan University. From 1984 to 1986 he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Thomas N. O’Neill, Jr. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He has received numerous recognitions, including having been selected as a Leader in Litigation by Chambers USA, a Best Lawyer in America in Commercial Litigation, a Pennsylvania Super Lawyer in Business Litigation, and a local Litigation Star by Benchmark.
Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller will celebrate its 20th anniversary at the end of 2014. Since its founding, the firm has served as counsel on numerous nationally recognized cases that have established and protected important legal principles. Recently, the Hangley Aronchick litigation department has celebrated great successes in the Luzerne County “Kids-for-Cash” litigation, under the direction of Dan Segal; and in successfully representing long-standing retail pharmacy clients in the K-Dur antitrust litigation, a landmark case in which Hangley Aronchick litigators convinced the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to hold that so-called “pay-for-delay” patent settlements in the pharmaceutical industry are subject to rigorous antitrust scrutiny. That result set up a clear circuit split and led to the recent adoption of a similar rule by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2012, the firm was selected by The Legal Intelligencer as Pennsylvania Litigation Department of the Year in the general litigation, mid-sized firm category.
