Berger Schatz: The Judge’s Son, and the Award Rival Firms Compete For

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At a Glance

Firm	Berger Schatz. Styled “Berger/Schatz” with a slash in Illinois opinions through about 2012; the legal entity is Berger Schatz LLP, though the firm’s own site never displays “LLP.”
Founded	1987, by Michael J. Berger, Barry A. Schatz and David H. Levy — all three still on the roster thirty-nine years later
Offices	161 N. Clark Street, Unit 3300, Chicago, IL 60601 (headquarters, city proper). Satellite in Lake Forest — suburban, outside this profile’s scope.
Focus	Family law only: dissolution, marital property and business valuation, maintenance, allocation of parental responsibilities, marital agreements, adoption, litigation and appeals
Size	38 attorneys — 9 principals, 12 partners, 10 of counsel, 7 associates — counted from the firm’s own roster
Distinctive edge	Beat the biggest name in Illinois matrimonial law in the Illinois Supreme Court in 2017 — and does not advertise it
Signature result	Advertised results appear on exactly one attorney bio. There is no results page. See Section IV.
Peer standing	Chambers High Net Worth 2026: Band 1, Illinois Family/Matrimonial, with four ranked individuals. Verified at Chambers — and the firm does not claim the department ranking anywhere.
Fee model	Not published (per the firm’s site)
Disciplinary record	No discipline located. The ARDC’s primary database failed its own control test and could not be queried — see Section VIII. This is not a clearance.

I. The Judge’s Son, and the Award His Rivals Compete For

Michael J. Berger’s father was Judge Samuel S. Berger — a lawyer, a rabbi and a politician. The Illinois chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers gives an annual award named for him, presented to an Illinois attorney or judge who, in the chapter’s own words, “exemplifies the highest standards of integrity, courtesy, knowledge of family law and demonstrates an extraordinary ability to solve human problems.”

That is confirmed from two directions that did not coordinate: a 2011 magazine profile of Berger, which quotes the same criteria almost word for word and describes his father as a lawyer, rabbi and politician; and the Academy’s own award page, which we read directly. It is the rarest kind of origin fact — one the conferring body itself publishes.

And in 2024 the Samuel S. Berger Award went to Howard A. London of Beermann LLP — a direct competitor, one of the only two other firms in Chambers’ Illinois Band 1, and a firm separately profiled on this site. The honor named for the founder’s father is a prize his rivals win.

Berger did not start here. He began as an associate at Feiwell & Galper, a firm with what he describes as “a very small amount of divorce work,” grew that practice to seven lawyers, became a partner by twenty-eight, and had his name added to the door: Feiwell, Galper, Lasky & Berger Ltd. He and Barry Schatz met as young lawyers second-chairing for two more senior lawyers on opposite sides of the same case. By Schatz’s account they talked about partnership socially for years without the timing working — when Berger was ready to leave his firm, Schatz was not, and when Schatz wanted to go out on his own, Berger was not. They founded Berger Schatz in 1987.

One correction, because this firm is routinely described the wrong way. Berger Schatz is frequently characterized as one of the oldest matrimonial firms in Chicago. It is not. At 1987 it is the youngest of the four Chicago family law firms in this batch: Davis Friedman dates itself to 1946, Beermann to 1958, Schiller DuCanto & Fleck to 1981 — each verified on that firm’s own site. Berger Schatz’s real distinction is not seniority.

A second small correction, in the interest of not repeating an error: in the 2011 profile Berger says Illinois had no concept of marital property until 1980, when the statute “got completely reworked.” The Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act took effect October 1, 1977. The recollection is off by about three years.

II. The Mechanism: Treatise, Appellate Bench, and a Retention Model

The firm’s own headline claim is the one thing here that does not hold up, so take it first. The homepage and practice page both say Berger Schatz is “one of the largest law firms in the nation dedicated exclusively to family law.” We counted 38 attorneys from the firm’s own roster. Schiller DuCanto & Fleck’s own roster runs to roughly 40. Beermann’s runs to 57. No independent ranking of family law firms by headcount exists that we could find, so the claim is unfalsifiable rather than false — but on the only measurable comparison available, two Chicago competitors are the same size or larger. And the firm is smaller than it used to be: the 2011 profile records 39 lawyers. Today it has 38. It is leading with a size claim while marginally shrinking.

The checkable comparative is better than the superlative and the firm should use it instead. Chambers High Net Worth’s Illinois Family/Matrimonial category contains exactly one band, and exactly three firms are in it: Beermann LLP, Berger Schatz, and Schiller DuCanto & Fleck. That is a hard, independently conferred fact that places the firm precisely, without any adjective.

What actually distinguishes the practice:

Treatise authorship, with a title and a publisher. Katya C. Fuentes co-authors the “Discovery” chapter of Illinois Family Law: Preliminary Considerations in Dissolution Actions, published by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education, 2023 edition, following revised editions from 2011 through 2015. That is the practitioner text Illinois family lawyers actually pull off the shelf. Barry Schatz is listed as IICLE faculty. Several Chicago firms claim published scholarship; this one can name the chapter.

A real appellate practice with a real record. There is a standalone litigation-and-appeals page, and behind it two Illinois Supreme Court merits appearances and a string of published First and Second District opinions (Section IV).

Financial and valuation work as the organizing principle — business valuations, separating personal from enterprise goodwill, protecting non-marital assets. Berger has taught on valuation for a business-valuation publisher. Note the limit: there is no in-house forensic accounting unit. The firm retains outside experts, and says so.

Teaching. David H. Levy lectures at Loyola, the University of Chicago Law School and DePaul. Katya Fuentes was an adjunct professor of trial advocacy at Chicago-Kent. Leon Finkel lectures to law and accounting firms.

An explicit retention model, which is unusual enough to be a mechanism. Schatz, in 2011: “We’ve had very few staff and attorneys who have left us… We started flex hours before it was en vogue.” Berger noted in 2024 that an assistant had retired after thirty-six years; in that same 2011 profile she is named and described as having then been with him for thirty. The two figures reconcile exactly, which is a small thing and the kind of small thing that usually does not.

III. Practice Areas

Dissolution of marriage. Marital property division and business valuation. Maintenance. Allocation of parental responsibilities and parenting time. Child support. Premarital and postnuptial agreements. Adoption. Relocation. Post-decree matters. Litigation and appeals.

The firm practices family law exclusively. That much of the “dedicated exclusively to family law” claim is verified; it is the “one of the largest” half that is not.

IV. Track Record — the Supreme Court Case the Firm Barely Mentions

Past results do not guarantee or predict the outcome of any future case.

The firm has no results page, no dollar figures, no win statistics and no client testimonials anywhere on its site. Advertised outcomes appear in exactly one place: a single attorney’s bio. For this category that is unusually restrained, and it removes almost the entire class of disclosure problem this project keeps finding in Chicago.

The case worth knowing about is In re Marriage of Heroy, 2017 IL 120205. We read the Illinois Supreme Court’s opinion in full. The counsel block reads: “Leon I. Finkel, Peter Sullivan, and Myra A. Foutris, of Berger Schatz, of Chicago, for appellant. Schiller DuCanto & Fleck LLP, of Chicago (Michele M. Jochner, Tanya J. Stanish, and Karen M. Schetz, of counsel), for appellee.”

The two most decorated matrimonial firms in Illinois argued against each other in the state’s highest court. Both are profiled on this site. Berger Schatz was on the winning side of the issue that mattered to its client. Justice Garman wrote for a unanimous court on March 23, 2017. The appellate court had reversed the attorney-fee contribution awarded to Berger Schatz’s client; the Supreme Court reversed that reversal and reinstated the circuit court, holding it had not abused its discretion in ordering a $160,000 fee contribution.

The result was mixed, and this profile says so rather than rounding it up. The disposition reads: “Appellate court judgment affirmed in part, reversed in part. Circuit court judgment affirmed. Cause remanded.” The same order that restored the firm’s client’s fees also affirmed the reduction of her permanent maintenance from $35,000 a month to $27,500 a month — the opposing firm’s win. Berger Schatz’s own bio describes the case simply as “a significant victory before the Illinois Supreme Court,” which is fair as to the fees and silent as to the maintenance reduction that stood against its client in the same opinion.

The lasting part is the holding: the court reconciled the Schneider “inability to pay” standard with section 508 of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, finding the two “complement, rather than contradict, each other.” This is now the leading modern Illinois authority on fee contribution in divorce, and this firm briefed and argued it.

The underlying 2008 award, also the firm’s. The $35,000-per-month permanent maintenance award in the same litigation is confirmed in the Supreme Court’s own recitation of the history, as is the appellate court’s affirmance of it and the denial of leave to appeal in 2009. The firm’s bio calls it “the highest maintenance award ever to be affirmed on appeal in Illinois at that time.” The $35,000 figure is verified. The “highest ever” superlative is not verifiable from any source we found, and this profile does not adopt it.

Other verified appearances: In re Marriage of Koenig, 2012 IL App (2d) 110503 (Barry A. Schatz and Brendan J. Hammer for appellant); In re Marriage of Mancine, 965 N.E.2d 592 (1st Dist. 2012), under the older “Berger/Schatz” styling. Mancine was later superseded on rehearing at 2014 IL App (1st) 111138-B, and we could not determine the outcome for the firm’s client after that rehearing — so this profile draws no conclusion from it. The firm’s name appears in the counsel block or text of some two dozen other Illinois opinions between 2006 and August 2026; we did not verify the firm’s role or the result in those, and do not count them.

An error inside a single sentence of the firm’s own bio copy. It reads: “In March 2017, Leon led a Berger Schatz team to a significant victory before the Illinois Supreme Court… (In re the Former Marriage of Heroy, March 23, 2016).” The opinion was filed March 23, 2017. The sentence gives both years, and the parenthetical is wrong. The case is also miscaptioned; the actual caption is In re Marriage of Heroy.

There is no disclaimer of any kind on this website. The one page that looks like it might carry one is a pure privacy policy. There is no attorney-advertising notice, no prior-results disclaimer and no “this is not legal advice” statement anywhere on the site. With essentially no advertised results the practical exposure is small, but the omission is real and total.

V. Client Voice — Near-Zero, and We Are Not Padding It

For a thirty-eight-lawyer firm in its thirty-ninth year, the public client-review record is close to nonexistent. That is characteristic of high-end matrimonial work — confidential matters, clients who do not post — and it is reported here as a finding rather than filled in.

What exists: one review aggregator page for the firm carries a 1.0 rating from exactly one review, confirmed both in the page text and in its machine-readable structured data. Search engines still advertise that same page as carrying twenty-eight reviews. It carries one. That is a clean illustration of how stale directory data is in this city, and a reason not to trust a review count you have not opened. On the employee side, Glassdoor shows 4.2 out of 5 with 100% recommending, across three reviews — a sample too small to mean much — with its lowest category scores in senior management and career opportunities. A second employment site shows 2.8 across four.

One substantive negative exists and we are not quoting it as established. A 2018 review by a self-identified attorney describes an equity track driven by business origination and a management style the reviewer characterizes harshly. We obtained it through a single retrieval of a site that blocks automated access, could not re-verify the text, and it corresponds to no disciplinary finding or court record. It is recorded because omitting it would be an editorial choice in the firm’s favor; it is not quoted because we cannot stand behind the words. Note the tension worth holding: the firm’s public account of itself emphasizes retention and flex hours, Glassdoor’s culture score supports that, and the lowest scores on the same page are senior management and advancement. Both things can be true.

Because the client corpus is so thin, the attributable quotes worth having come from people on the record, not from review sites.

From Miles Beermann, name partner of a Band 1 competitor, speaking on the record about Berger in 2011:

“He’s one of the premier divorce lawyers in Illinois… He’s just one of the top two or three lawyers in Chicago.”

“Berger can be an extremely difficult opponent… Some people say Berger is too tough, but his clients and opposing lawyers get the truth.”

We include the second half deliberately. A rival’s assessment that includes “some people say he is too tough” is worth more than a testimonial, and it is the kind of thing a prospective client should weigh.

From the Hon. Raúl Vega, then presiding judge of Cook County’s Domestic Violence Division, on a firm attorney: “She is logical and reasonable and does not fuel the fire in high-conflict matters… a formidable opponent when the need arises.”

And from market commentary collected by Chambers’ own researchers, not by the firm: “I highly respect Berger Schatz”; of one principal, “He has done good work for clients in difficult matters”; of another, “She is very thoughtful and pragmatic.”

VI. Beyond the Courtroom

There is no firm-level pro bono program, no foundation and no charitable page. We looked and found nothing at the institutional level. Community involvement here is individual, listed on attorney bios, and none of it is confirmed by the recipient organizations — we attempted that confirmation and obtained none. Reported as firm-stated:

• Brian J. Blitz — board member, Michael Rolfe Pancreatic Cancer Foundation, 2009 to present; Big Brothers Big Sisters mentor, 2018–2020
• Molly H. Haunty — board of directors, Hinsdale Wellness House, 2021 to present
• Karen Rose Krehbiel — board member, High Jump; women’s board, Rush University Medical Center
• Sharon S. Mobley — Cook County CASA program, 2021 to present
• Laura R. Gottlieb — volunteer, Chicago Animal Care and Control, 2014 to present
• Several attorneys as Big Brothers Big Sisters mentors

The most interesting item is verifiable and slightly startling. Partner Margaret Keane sits on the advisory board of the Schiller, DuCanto & Fleck Family Law Center at DePaul University College of Law — a center endowed by and named for the firm’s principal competitor. The center exists and is confirmed on DePaul’s own domain, where it is described as having operated more than two decades and as supporting roughly two hundred Family Law Fellows. In a practice area this concentrated, a partner at one Band 1 firm helping govern a teaching center named for another is the clearest available picture of how small this bar actually is.

VII. Credentials and Recognition

Verified at the conferring body. Chambers High Net Worth 2026 ranks the firm’s Illinois Family/Matrimonial department Band 1 — one of three firms in the state’s only band — and ranks four of its lawyers individually: Brian Blitz, Dina Warner, Jason Adess and Michael Berger. We read this at Chambers.

Notably, the firm does not claim the department ranking anywhere on its site. One principal’s bio cites only “Chambers and Partners’ High Net Worth Guide, 2023 – Present.” The firm’s strongest single credential goes unmentioned while a size claim it cannot support runs on the homepage. That is an odd allocation of marketing attention, and we note it in the firm’s favor on the accuracy question.

AAML, verified at the Academy. Michael S. Sabath is a confirmed Fellow on the national Academy’s own page, which also records that he manages the firm’s Lake Forest office. Brian J. Blitz sits on the Illinois chapter’s Board of Managers, term expiring October 2026, verified on the chapter’s roster — and his bio does not even mention the board seat. David H. Levy’s bio claims, in correct past tense, that he was the youngest member ever admitted to the AAML and served on its National Board of Governors; neither is verified — the Academy’s site refused automated access. One caution for anyone working from this profile: we found no AAML claim for Michael J. Berger on the firm’s site, and a research tool during this project fabricated one. Do not assert AAML status for him in either direction.

Best Lawyers, partially verified. The firm is listed at the Best Law Firms directory under Chicago family law; we could not resolve its tier and do not state one. A “Lawyer of the Year” title in Family Law Arbitration for Chicago 2023 is firm-announced and not verified at the source — worth noting that Best Lawyers names only one such honoree per practice area per metro per year, so it is a real distinction if accurate. Individual “since” years and the firm’s counts of nineteen recognized attorneys are firm-stated.

No current bar office is claimed by any attorney at this firm. We checked all thirty-eight bios for present-tense leadership language. What we found were plain memberships, dated committee service and section membership. Because no current office is asserted, nothing is contradicted by any organization’s roster — which is the opposite of what we found at two other firms in this batch, and worth stating as a positive.

Kept separate, because they are not peer review. Super Lawyers is by volume the firm’s most-cited credential — fourteen announcement posts between 2012 and 2023. It and Leading Lawyers Network, Lawdragon, and the trade-press “40 Under Forty” lists are commercial programs that monetize the people they name. One disclosure of our own: the 2011 magazine profile this article relies on for the firm’s origin story was published by the same media organization that confers the Leading Lawyers designation the firm cites. We used it for biography, not for evaluation, and we flag the overlap rather than hide it.

One misleading headline. A firm post is titled “21 Attorneys Earn Recognition by Super Lawyers.” The body says thirteen earned Super Lawyers status and eight made the Rising Stars list. Thirteen plus eight is twenty-one, so the arithmetic is honest; the headline silently merges a senior honor with a junior one and the body never uses the number twenty-one. The 2022 post has the same structure. It is misleading framing rather than a false figure, and that is how we report it.

Unverifiable superlatives, recorded and not repeated: that the firm is “one of the largest in the nation dedicated exclusively to family law” (Section II); that it remains “the only matrimonial and family law firm in Illinois to place three attorneys on the Top 100 Illinois list in the same year”; and the “highest maintenance award ever affirmed on appeal” claim in Section IV.

VIII. What We Checked, and What We Could Not

No evidence of discipline was found in secondary sources. This is not a clearance, and we will not present it as one. We were able to construct valid authenticated requests to the ARDC’s lawyer search — anti-forgery token, paired cookie, correct enumerated values — and every correctly formed request returned HTTP 500. The separate disciplinary-search channel returns HTTP 200, but our control query for the surname Johnson returned no results, which is impossible for Illinois. The channel fails its own control test. No attorney at this firm has been verified as being in good standing. A targeted secondary sweep for lawsuits, sanctions, malpractice actions and disciplinary news naming the firm or any of its thirty-eight attorneys returned nothing but generic bar-association discipline roundups. No sanctions appear in any of the opinions we reviewed.

Things that check out, and should be said, because this metro’s norm is worse. We cross-checked every attorney named in the firm’s 2012–2023 news archive against its current roster. Ten attorneys who have left are correctly absent. No deceased or departed attorney is listed as current — and the firm uses a “(dec.)” label where appropriate, so it has the convention and applies it. Michael J. Berger is living and practicing: his bio was updated in April 2026, he has bylined work from 2025, and Chambers currently ranks him. The site is actively maintained; its newest post was published the day before this research. Every internal link we tested returned 200. The reported address and all nine principals were confirmed exactly. The firm has been at 161 N. Clark for more than twenty-five years, moving from the 28th floor to the 33rd in February 2023 — a detail its own news archive gets internally consistent.

The staleness that does exist is concentrated in one place. The “Our Firm” page — the only page carrying the founding year and the firm narrative — was last modified in August 2021, while the page carrying the “largest in the nation” claim was updated in September 2025. The result is two different superlatives of two different vintages on two pages. There is no founding year on the homepage and no organization schema carrying one. The contact page renders only an embedded form; the addresses live on a separate locations page, and one contact URL that appears in external citations is a hard 404.

Identity notes. “Berger” is among the most common surnames in American law firm names. This firm is unrelated to Berger Montague, Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, Goldberg Segalla, or any Berger-named foundation, all of which surfaced during research. A separate Chicago attorney named Jonathan Neil Schatz, practicing in the same ZIP code, is not part of this firm. And Samuel Berger — the name on the AAML award — was the founder’s father and a judge, not a lawyer at this firm.

IX. The Illinois Legal Backdrop, in Plain English

General information, not legal advice. Statutes below were verified as described in Methodology; outcomes turn on facts a lawyer has to look at.

Illinois does not recognize legal specialists. Illinois Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4(b) states that “The Supreme Court of Illinois does not recognize certifications of specialties in the practice of law, nor does it recognize certifications of expertise in any phase of the practice of law by any agency, governmental or private, or by any group, organization or association.” Rule 7.4(c) bars a lawyer from stating or implying that they are “certified,” a “specialist” or an “expert” except to identify an actual certificate or award, and then only with a disclaimer stating that the Supreme Court of Illinois does not recognize specialty certification and that it is not required to practice law in Illinois. Registered patent attorneys are the only carve-out. There is no Illinois board certification in family law — the state runs no specialization program at all, so a fellowship in a national academy, however demanding, is a peer credential and not a specialty certification. No lawyer is described as a specialist, certified or an expert anywhere in this profile.

There is one ground for divorce, and fault is not it. Under 750 ILCS 5/401, irreconcilable differences is the sole ground for dissolution; the fault grounds were abolished by Public Act 99-90, effective January 1, 2016. Six months of living separate and apart creates a presumption the requirement is met. One spouse must have lived in Illinois for ninety days before filing.

Illinois divides marital property equitably, not equally. Under 750 ILCS 5/503 the court divides marital property in “just proportions” on statutory factors; Illinois is not a community property state and there is no presumption of a 50/50 split. Non-marital property — gifts, inheritances, property owned before the marriage, property excluded by valid agreement — is assigned to the spouse who owns it. In a business-valuation case, the argument about which column an asset belongs in usually decides more money than the division itself.

Maintenance runs on a formula, up to a ceiling. Under 750 ILCS 5/504, where combined gross income is under $500,000 and the court finds maintenance appropriate, the guideline figure is 33⅓% of the payor’s net annual income minus 25% of the payee’s, capped so the payee’s total does not exceed 40% of combined net income, with duration set by a multiplier keyed to the length of the marriage. The current net-income formula arrived with Public Act 100-923, effective January 1, 2019. Above the ceiling the guidelines do not apply and the court works from the statutory factors — which is the territory the maintenance fight in Heroy occupied.

Child support is an income-shares calculation. Public Act 99-764, effective July 1, 2017, replaced the old percentage-of-the-payer’s-income model with one that starts from both parents’ incomes and the number of overnights.

“Custody” is not a term Illinois law uses. Since January 1, 2016, 750 ILCS 5/602.5 governs allocation of significant decision-making responsibilities and 5/602.7 governs parenting time.

Moving with a child has a mileage rule. Under 750 ILCS 5/609.2, relocation means more than 25 miles if the child’s primary residence is in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry or Will County, more than 50 miles elsewhere in Illinois, and more than 25 miles across a state line. At least 60 days’ written notice is required to the other parent and the court.

Attorney’s fees can be shifted, and this firm wrote the modern authority on it. Section 508 of the Act allows a court to order one spouse to contribute to the other’s attorney’s fees. Heroy is the case that explains how the statutory factors and the “inability to pay” inquiry fit together. If you are the lower-earning spouse worried you cannot fund a fight against a better-resourced one, this is the provision to ask about.

Orders of protection. Under the Illinois Domestic Violence Act of 1986, 750 ILCS 60/, an emergency order issues without notice and runs 14 to 21 days; an interim order up to 30 days; a plenary order, after a full hearing, up to two years, renewable.

X. The Awesome Attorneys Assessment

The specific thing this firm has is a published appellate record against the best opposition in the state. Not a claim about appellate capability — an Illinois Supreme Court opinion, public, in which Berger Schatz briefed and argued against Schiller DuCanto & Fleck and got its client’s $160,000 fee contribution reinstated, producing the authority Illinois lawyers now cite on fee contribution in divorce. Add a Chambers Band 1 department with four individually ranked lawyers, a named IICLE treatise chapter, a roster the firm actively prunes rather than padding, and a bar-credential record in which no attorney overstates a single current office, and you have a firm whose factual claims about its lawyers are, as far as we could test them, accurate.

The honest limitation is that the firm sells the one thing it cannot substantiate and stays quiet about the things it can. “One of the largest in the nation dedicated exclusively to family law” runs on the homepage while the firm is 38 lawyers — smaller than two Chicago competitors, and one lawyer smaller than it was in 2011. Meanwhile its Band 1 department ranking appears nowhere on its own site. Its marquee Supreme Court win is described in a bio sentence that gets the year wrong twice over and miscaptions the case. It publishes no disclaimer of any kind — not for advertising, not for prior results, not for legal advice. The narrative page has not been touched since 2021. None of this is about competence. It is a firm that is worse at describing itself than at practicing.

This firm is right for the client facing a hard, contested matter that may not end at the trial court — a complex property or valuation fight, a fee-contribution problem, a case where the other side has hired one of the two or three comparable firms in the state, or anything with a real prospect of appeal. Its demonstrated strength is the appellate record and the depth behind it. It is a weaker fit for a client who wants scale for its own sake, since two competitors are larger and one is substantially so; and a poor fit for someone who wants to research a firm before hiring, because there is one review on the internet and no results, testimonials or fee information published anywhere. Ask who argues the appeal if there is one, ask for the fee structure in writing, and verify any credential you care about with the body that confers it.

Methodology & Sourcing

Research conducted September 16, 2026. Roster, principals, titles, addresses, practice pages, page-modification dates and the privacy page were read through the site’s own exposed content API rather than scraped or summarized, so the 38-attorney count and the nine principals are exact rather than inferred. The 1987 founding is corroborated three ways — the firm’s own page, a 2011 magazine profile, and the founder’s own 2024 account. The Samuel S. Berger Award, its criteria and the founder’s father’s identity are confirmed both in that 2011 profile and, independently, on the AAML Illinois chapter’s own award page; the 2024 recipient’s firm affiliation was checked separately. Comparative founding years for three competitor firms were read in raw HTML on each competitor’s own site. In re Marriage of Heroy, 2017 IL 120205, was read in full from the official Illinois Supreme Court PDF, including the counsel block, the disposition and the fee and maintenance holdings; Koenig and Mancine were confirmed from the opinion record, and Mancine‘s outcome after rehearing is expressly reported as undetermined. Chambers band and individual rankings were read at chambers.com; AAML fellowship and board service on the Academy’s own pages; the DePaul center on DePaul’s own domain. The 1.0/1 review figure was taken from the aggregator page’s structured data, not from a summarizer. The 2018 employee review and one other negative item are reported as existing but are deliberately not quoted, because the text could not be re-verified. A research tool used during this project fabricated an AAML credential for one attorney; the fabrication was caught by re-pulling the bio through the content API, and that credential is asserted in neither direction here. Discipline was not verified: correctly formed authenticated requests to the ARDC lawyer search returned HTTP 500, and the alternate disciplinary channel failed a surname control test, so no attorney here has been checked against the primary register. Statutes were verified against the Illinois Courts’ own published text for Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4, and, for the family law provisions, against current compilations carrying the governing Public Act notes — the Illinois General Assembly’s own site was unreachable on the research date for a fifth consecutive day, with a TLS certificate-verification failure, so 750 ILCS 5/401, 5/503, 5/504, 5/505, 5/508, 5/602.5, 5/602.7, 5/609.2 and 750 ILCS 60/ rest on secondary repositories rather than primary text. Claims we could not verify are marked as unverified rather than softened or omitted.

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