Born and raised in NYC. I grew up watching my dad argue cases in the federal court (mostly because his days for custody were Wed and Fri. and he tended to forget childcare for me on at least one of those days). I graduated from Brown in 2005 and Cornell Law in 2009. After CLS, I worked at Kelley Drye where I focused primarily on commercial arbitrations, SEC investigations, working with high level banking clients, a qui tam case,
and on a few state court cases. Within a few months, I was now the sole associate working with at most 2 of the most senior partners in my firm and it was my sole responsibility to mansge the entire case up to trial or arbitration. About 8 months after starting work, I was provided with a spot bonus. A few days later, I leaned I had been awarded The Bar’s NY Rising Star Award. I’m That June all associates received a uniform spring bonus. A few weeks later, I was told the firm was moving in a different direction as the # of cases directly related to the financial crisis were declining and I would be expected to start working on fighting employee discrimination cases. I kept my job but quietly allied to The New School’s
Corporate management program. I ended up earning a free ride so I provided my employer two weeks notice and began grad school, hoping the business skills I learned would assist me in being a more well rounded candidate when I reentered the job market. While at The New School, I wrote and edited for The World Policy Journal, conducted legal research for the Open Society Foundation, drafted grants, and graduated summa cum laud, winning highest honors for a legal analysis and proposed new business model for Corbin Hll, a farm upstate which has devoted itself to providing fresh produce to low income residents in low income communities.
After school, I served on a wide range of boards and clubs, including my alumni clubs, the Central Park Conservancy, volunteer for the NYPL, AMNH, and the NY Historical Society, and being invited to join The Norwood and Core Club. While working on a subcommittee in the Wall Street Block
st Alliance, I met Andrew, the CEO of Positrust and my future boss. Positrust had existed since the mid 90s but they had recently gotten a large investment in order to pitch their proprietary IP, first to hedge funds and then using it to tokenize real estate. They needed in house counsel to help their team, a primarily tech focused group, to essentially draft internal complained procedures, keep them up to date on new laws coming out, and most
Importantly, work with our in house auditor to vet all potential clients. They offered me $280k plus benefits-and any other time in my life I would have stayed in NYC but I was alone in the middle of the pandemic and zi had just found out from my landlord that he would never sell me the space I’d called home for over ten years-so I moved to
Chicago. Within a few mother after moving there, I began to get random emails that appeared they were from my company but also were clearly from out of the country. Then one day, I just stopped getting paid and my health insurance stopped. I tried to out to the two CEOs but didn’t have any luck. Finally, the auditor called me to tell me she hadn’t been paid either and she thought that both of them had just bailed.
Since that point, I’ve been trying to get back to NY because although Chicago is a lovely place, I am licensed to practice in New York and my entire professional network is there. I am an exceptional attorney with a wide range of skills but when I first began my career, I tended to be inflexible, especially during times of high stress. Of course I still feel stressed but I truly believe my life experience has made me a much better person and a much stronger attorney.
Very best, Samantha Plesser
