Levin & Perconti: The Firm That Made Illinois Nursing Home Cases Worth Bringing

Attorney advertising. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by the firm before publication. Awesome Attorneys is not a lawyer referral service and does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any firm. Results described below are attributed to their published source; past results do not guarantee or predict the outcome of any future case. Nothing here is legal advice.

At a Glance

Firm	Levin & Perconti
Founded	1992, when Steven M. Levin and John J. Perconti merged their separate practices; LLC formed December 9, 2002
Office	325 N. LaSalle Drive, Suite 300, Chicago, IL 60654 — single office
Focus	Nursing home and group home abuse; medical malpractice and birth injury; catastrophic injury; wrongful death
Side of the docket	Plaintiff only
Size	26 attorneys on the published roster (the firm’s About page says “over 30”)
Signature result	$12.2M verdict, Adams v. Lakeview Rehabilitation & Nursing Center, Cook County, November 15, 2025 — still uncollected
Best-documented result	$4,111,477.66, Grauer v. Clare Oaks, affirmed at 2019 IL App (1st) 180835
Bar standing	Margaret Battersby Black, 2nd Vice President, Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, 2027–28; Michael Bonamarte, former President, AAJ Nursing Home Litigation Group
Fee model	Contingency (per the firm)
Disciplinary record	No public discipline on file with the Illinois ARDC for any named attorney

I. The Partner Who Started on the Other Side, and the Sister Who Was There at the Start

John J. Perconti worked in the United States House of Representatives as a Page and a Capitol tour guide before law school, and then spent 1983 to 1986 as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Illinois, defending state agencies in civil litigation. He began his legal career representing the government against people suing it. He has spent the thirty-nine years since doing the reverse.

Steven M. Levin was Lead Article Editor of the Loyola University School of Law Review, took his J.D. cum laude in 1976, and was admitted to the Illinois bar on October 7, 1976 — a date confirmed on his ARDC registration, not just his biography. The two merged their practices in 1992.

The third detail is the one the firm mentions almost in passing. Levin’s sister was part of the original group, and she is still of counsel: the ARDC lists her under the full licensed name Susan Levin Novosad, admitted May 8, 1986. A related caution for anyone verifying this firm’s lawyers themselves: managing partner Margaret Battersby Black is registered with the ARDC as Margaret Patricia Battersby. Searching “Black” returns nothing.

The firm says it was “one of the first law firms in the nation to file lawsuits against nursing homes.” We could not corroborate that from any source outside the firm, and no first case or year is named anywhere on its site. We are reporting it as a claim.

II. The Mechanism: Fee-Shifting Is What Makes These Cases Exist

A nursing home death often produces modest compensatory damages. The resident was elderly, had no earnings to lose, and may have had months to live. On ordinary contingency economics, that case does not get brought, which is precisely why neglect in long-term care was under-litigated for decades.

The Illinois Nursing Home Care Act changes the arithmetic, because it shifts attorney’s fees to the defendant. Levin & Perconti’s most consequential work is not any single verdict — it is having litigated that fee provision, repeatedly and publicly, until the economics held.

That fight has a scoreboard, and it is not one-sided. The firm lost the first round: in Pietrzyk v. Oak Lawn Pavilion, Inc., 769 N.E.2d 134 (1st Dist. 2002), with Levin as plaintiff’s counsel, the court affirmed cutting a $232,928.29 fee request to $100,510.18, holding that Act fees are unavailable for work on the wrongful-death claim. Seventeen years later, in Grauer v. Clare Oaks, 2019 IL App (1st) 180835, it lost the same point again — the appellate court reversed a $1,370,492.55 fee award and remanded, finding the contingency fee improperly swept in wrongful-death damages. It won the war in November 2024, when the appellate court upheld roughly $1.3 million in fees plus about $150,000 in costs, a decision that trade and defense-side press treated as precedent-setting.

The firm’s website presents that sequence as a clean win. It was twenty-two years of losing a point and then not losing it.

III. Practice Areas

• Nursing home abuse and neglect
• Group home and residential-facility abuse
• Medical malpractice, including birth injury and cerebral palsy
• Failure to diagnose, including cancer misdiagnosis
• Car and truck collisions
• Wrongful death

Worth naming plainly: despite the nursing-home branding, the dollar weight sits elsewhere. The firm’s own top nine results are birth injury, medical malpractice and motor vehicle cases; its largest nursing-home result ranks seventh. Nursing home is the firm’s identity and its referral channel. Medical malpractice is its revenue centre.

IV. Track Record

Past results do not guarantee or predict the outcome of any future case. Sources are named. Figures we could not confirm outside the firm’s own materials are marked.

$40,000,000	Birth injury verdict, Campbell v. Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center, Coles County, March 2023 — a suit filed in 2008 for a plaintiff who was 19 at trial. Covered independently by The Pantagraph, WCIA and WAND, with the damages broken out line by line. Tried with co-counsel Spiros Law, P.C., which the firm’s homepage does not always note.
$12,200,000	Adams v. Lakeview Rehabilitation & Nursing Center / Infinity Healthcare Management, Cook County, November 15, 2025, after a three-day trial; decedent Shirley Adams, 79. Reported by FOX 32 Chicago and Law360. See Section VI — it has not been paid.
$4,111,477.66	Grauer v. Clare Oaks, Cook County No. 13 L 2472 — discontinued anticoagulation followed by stroke. The exact figure is recited in the published appellate opinion, 2019 IL App (1st) 180835, and the judgment was affirmed. This is the firm’s most independently documented result.
Jury Verdict Reporter top ten	Eight consecutive years in the annual settlements report — an objective, data-derived ranking rather than a purchased award. The 2023 listing recorded $55 million across 41 settled cases.

Figures we could not verify. The firm advertises a “$45.5 million” group home abuse settlement as the largest in Illinois history; it appears only on firm-controlled pages, and we found no independent source. The same is true of the $29M, $27M, $19M, $18M, $17.7M and $11.5M entries. The $27M is described inconsistently across the firm’s own pages — as a “$27M recovery including a $20M jury verdict” on one, a “$27M birth injury verdict” on another. And the headline aggregate is self-contradictory: the homepage says “over $2 billion recovered,” while the firm’s own nursing-home page says “more than $1 billion.”

V. Client Voice

The positive reviews name individual lawyers and describe sustained attention. The negative reviews describe the opposite, and they converge on one complaint.

“Mother a 95yr old lady was injured at a nursing home Where it resulted her in the lost of one of her eyes…After sitting on the case about four to six months I called to check on the process and was told they couldn’t help me.”
— Betty Johnson, 3 stars, Google, approximately October 2025

“My son was bullied to say the least and suffered a severe head injury at school…Steve would never answer emailed questions we had…After a year, he let us go and he did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!”
— Amy P., Birdeye, approximately 2023

“Our family used Levin & Perconti for a wrongful death lawsuit…Cari Silverman handled our case and worked tirelessly to get justice…”
— Diane Scott, 5 stars, Google, approximately September 2025

“Margaret Battersby Black was terrific…always straightforward, realistic and honest in my dealings with her.”
— anonymous, Lawyers.com, June 25, 2013

Both negative reviews describe the same arc: a case held for months to a year, thin communication, and then a declination. For a firm that screens heavily for viable Nursing Home Care Act claims, that is a predictable failure mode rather than a mystery — but a family that waited a year to be told no has a real grievance, and it is worth asking at intake how quickly the firm commits.

One caution on the star ratings: four different aggregators report four irreconcilable Google figures for this firm, from 3 reviews to 695, which points to duplicate Google Business Profiles. We are not publishing a Google average, because we could not establish one. The firm’s own testimonials page claims “500+ Reviews” and presents quotes with no platform and no date.

VI. The Verdict That Was Never Paid, and Three Claims That Do Not Hold

The $12.2 million is a headline, not a payment. By the firm’s own account, published January 28, 2026, the Adams verdict — $17.3 million with interest and fees — remains unpaid despite a court order, alongside roughly $4 to $5 million in settlements across some thirty Cook County cases, a total of $20 to $22 million owed by operator Moishe Gubin and the Strawberry Fields REIT structure. The firm’s own lawyer is quoted saying they are doubtful the Adams family will be paid anytime soon; it moved for contempt in February 2026.

Publicising that is to the firm’s credit, and the non-payment is the defendant’s doing, not the lawyer’s. The disclosure problem is narrower: the $12.2 million still appears as a headline result on the homepage and the successful-cases page with no indication that not a dollar has reached the client — and that results page carries no disclaimer of any kind. No note that figures are gross of fees and costs, no note on collectability, no past-results language.

Three further claims do not survive checking:

• “The top three jury verdicts in nursing home negligence cases in Illinois.” The firm’s own results page lists its top three nursing-home verdicts as $12.2M, $4.1M and $2.9M. Malman Law, a different Chicago firm, obtained a $5.5 million nursing-home verdict in September 2023 — larger than this firm’s second and third. Notably, the firm uses much narrower and accurate language elsewhere on its own site for the same case (“highest Illinois Nursing Home Care Act verdict since 2006”), which suggests it knows the broader claim is soft.
• Four sets of inconsistent numbers. Total recovered: “over $2 billion” against “more than $1 billion.” Combined experience: “over 400 years” (homepage), “over 70 years” (About page), “130 years” (Chicago Bar Association profile). Firm size: 26, 24, “over 30,” “over 25” — depending which page you read.
• The roster does not match the firm’s own announcements. Its January 30, 2026 Super Lawyers release names Andrew J. Thut and Kelly Sabo Gaden as firm attorneys; neither appears on the current roster seven months later. The testimonials page still quotes praise for Daisy Ayllon, also not on the roster.

Employee reviews are the weakest external signal. Glassdoor shows 3.3 out of 5 across 35 reviews, with recurring complaints about pay, turnover and an understaffed paralegal department. A one-star review from a former attorney dated March 9, 2026: “The pay is extremely low compared to how much work you are expected to handle. Support staff carry a heavy load but rarely get recognition or fair compensation.” That is employee feedback, not client feedback, and it should not be read as either — but it is consistent with the roster churn above, and staffing stability is something a client with a five-year birth-injury case has a legitimate interest in.

What we did not find, having searched for it: no ARDC discipline against any named attorney — every record reads “Public Record of Discipline and Pending Proceedings: None.” No malpractice suit against the firm. No sanctions. (A warning for anyone checking this themselves: a search for “Levin” and “ARDC” surfaces a 1996 Seventh Circuit disbarment case. That is Marshall A. Levin of Skokie, an unrelated lawyer.)

VII. Beyond the Courtroom

On February 5, 2026 the firm gave $5,000 and 227 pounds of food to Nourishing Hope, packing 109 boxes — 40 for South Side seniors, 69 for sheltered individuals — with the managing partner delivering the donation herself. It is a small, specific, documented thing, which is more than most firms’ community pages can say.

The more substantial contribution is positional. Levin is a founding member of the American Association for Justice’s Nursing Home Litigation Group and sits on the Leadership Council of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, the leading national resident-advocacy organisation. Battersby Black wrote the DuPage County Bar Association’s practice guide on using the Nursing Home Care Act. Levin has published in Trial magazine and the Illinois State Bar Journal.

There is no formal pro bono program, no published pro bono hours, and no record of any named attorney testifying before the Illinois General Assembly.

VIII. Credentials and Recognition

Peer-reviewed and elected:

• Best Lawyers in America — explicitly peer-survey based. Steven Levin recognised since 2013 in Medical Malpractice Law – Plaintiffs and Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs, through the 2027 edition; seven attorneys named for 2027 plus five “Ones to Watch.”
• Super Lawyers 2026 — 11 Super Lawyers and 10 Rising Stars. Margaret Battersby Black made the Illinois Top 10 and Top 50 Women lists, a first for the firm; Michael Bonamarte made the Top 100.
• Bar leadership, verified against the organisations. Battersby Black — 2nd Vice President, Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (2027–28) and founding Chair of its Women’s Caucus. Bonamarte — former President of the AAJ Nursing Home Litigation Group and President of the Justinian Society of Lawyers (2017–18). Levin — founding member of the AAJ Nursing Home Litigation Group.
• Jury Verdict Reporter top-ten settlements, eight consecutive years — derived from case data, not purchased.
• “40 Illinois Attorneys Under Forty to Watch” — Bonamarte 2010, Battersby Black 2011, editorially selected by Law Bulletin Media.

Paid programs displayed alongside the above on the firm’s own homepage, which should not be read as peer honors: The National Trial Lawyers (membership fee), Lawyer Monthly Legal Awards (nomination/publication fee), Eldercare Matters Alliance (paid directory), Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America (dues-based), and the AAJ Leaders Forum — which reads like an honor but is a donor contribution tier. BBB accreditation is likewise a paid membership; the firm accredited on October 10, 2025 and has zero BBB reviews.

Two negatives worth stating because their absence is often assumed: we could not confirm a Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent rating for this firm and it should not be described as AV-rated, and the Chicago Bar Association’s own firm profile shows no CBA leadership roles.

IX. The Illinois Legal Backdrop, in Plain English

General information, not legal advice. Statutes were verified as noted in the Methodology section; deadlines turn on facts a lawyer has to look at.

Illinois does not recognize legal specialists. Illinois Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4(b) provides 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) forbids a lawyer from using “certified,” “specialist” or “expert” to describe their qualifications except to identify a real certificate or award, and then only with a disclaimer saying Illinois does not recognize specialty certifications and that the credential is not required to practice here. Registered patent attorneys are the lone exception. No lawyer is described as a specialist anywhere in this profile.

Two years, usually. 735 ILCS 5/13-202 gives two years from accrual for a personal injury action.

Fifty-one percent ends the case. 735 ILCS 5/2-1116 bars a plaintiff more than 50% at fault; at 50% or below, damages are reduced proportionally. No contributory fault may be attributed to a plaintiff suing over childhood sexual abuse.

Children get the clock back. 735 ILCS 5/13-211 gives a person injured before 18 two years from their eighteenth birthday.

The Nursing Home Care Act shifts fees. This is the provision described in Section II, and it is the reason an elder-neglect case with modest compensatory damages can be economically viable at all. Its scope — in particular how it interacts with a companion wrongful-death claim — has been litigated repeatedly, including in this firm’s own cases.

Public bodies are far shorter. Under 745 ILCS 10/8-101(a), a claim against a local public entity or its employee must be filed within one year. Subsection (b) allows two years, with a four-year repose, only for claims arising out of patient care — which is the subsection that reaches a county or municipal long-term care facility. Which subsection applies to a publicly operated nursing home is not a detail to guess at.

The CTA is one year, with no notice requirement. 70 ILCS 3605/41 gives one year to sue the Chicago Transit Authority. The six-month written notice requirement that older articles still describe was repealed effective June 1, 2009.

Wrongful death. Under 740 ILCS 180/1 and 180/2, the action is brought by the personal representative for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin, generally within two years of death; five years where death resulted from violent intentional conduct, or one year after final disposition of a related criminal case for certain offenses.

X. The Awesome Attorneys Assessment

What Levin & Perconti actually offers is not the nursing-home branding. It is that the firm has spent twenty-two years litigating the fee provision that makes a low-damages elder case worth a lawyer’s time, losing it in 2002, losing it again in 2019, and finally holding it in 2024. If your mother died in a facility and the compensatory value is small, this is a firm that has already fought the argument that determines whether anyone will take the case.

The trade-offs are real and they are three. First, the branding does not match the book — the dollar weight of this practice is birth injury and medical malpractice, and if you are bringing a straightforward nursing-home claim you will be one of the smaller matters in the building. Second, two independent client reviews describe the same pattern of a case held for the better part of a year and then declined, which for a firm that screens hard is a foreseeable outcome but a costly one for the family that waited; ask for a decision timeline in writing. Third, the marketing is looser than the lawyering. A “top three verdicts in Illinois” claim its own results page contradicts, a $45.5 million settlement with no trace outside its website, “over $2 billion” on one page and “more than $1 billion” on another, a results page with no disclaimer at all, and a headline $12.2 million verdict displayed as a win when the firm itself has publicly said the family has not been paid.

None of that is misconduct. Every named attorney’s ARDC record is clean and the verified results are genuinely strong. It does mean the right question at intake is a specific one: what did this case actually collect, and how long before you tell me yes or no?

This firm is right for a serious birth-injury or medical-malpractice case, or for an elder-neglect claim where the Nursing Home Care Act’s fee provision is what makes the case possible. It is a weaker fit for someone who wants a small case moved quickly, or who needs a firm that will commit at intake rather than after months of review.

Methodology & Sourcing

Research conducted September 13, 2026. Attorney admission dates and disciplinary status were taken from Illinois ARDC registration records, not from the firm; the ARDC search was validated against control surnames returning known records before any null result was relied on. Verdicts were checked against published appellate opinions (CourtListener, Justia), named news coverage (FOX 32 Chicago, Law360, The Pantagraph, WCIA, WAND, Cook County Record, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News) and court dockets where available. A paid press-release distribution of the $40 million verdict was disregarded as non-independent; the genuine local coverage was used instead. Figures with no independent source are identified in-text as firm-sourced. Bar credentials were verified against the conferring organisations. Statutes were verified against the Illinois General Assembly (735 ILCS 5/13-202, 5/2-1116, 5/13-211), the Illinois Courts’ official rule text (Ill. R. Prof’l Conduct 7.4), and the current Illinois Compiled Statutes as published by Justia and corroborated by Illinois Legal Aid Online (745 ILCS 10/8-101, 70 ILCS 3605/41, 740 ILCS 180/1–2). No Google star rating is published here because four aggregators returned four irreconcilable figures. Claims we could not verify are marked as unverified rather than softened or omitted.

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