SHELDON KARASIK, ESQ., a partner at Simon, Eisenberg & Baum, LLP, began his legal career with the firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt in Chicago, moving on after four years to the firm of Shea & Gould in New York City and then to Sheft & Sheft, where he became a partner in 1989. He then joined the firm of Cozen & O'Connor, also in New York, as a Senior Partner and Attorney in Charge of the New York Office in 1994, specializing in insurance coverage and defense matters. In 1999, Mr. Karasik formed his own firm, Karasik & Associates LLC, which merged into Simon, Eisenberg & Baum, LLP in 2009. Mr. Karasik is an AV-rated attorney, the highest peer review standing awarded by attorneys and judges. He has successfully first-chaired the defense of several insurance coverage trials and has handled over 30 appeals in cases involving commercial, environmental, regulatory, employment, insurance and corporate issues. He has developed seminars for insurer clients on pre-litigation case handling, discovery issues and settlement strategies. He has been a regular speaker at defense conferences across the country and is an Honorary Fellow of the Association of Fellows and Legal Scholars at the Center for International Legal Studies. His publications include: "Polaroid - The Sixty Million Dollar Mistake," Summer 1993 issue of Declarations, and "Recent Developments Regarding American Personal Injury Law," Comparative Law Yearbook of International Business, 2004. Mr. Karasik is a member of the American Bar Association and admitted to practice in New York and Illinois as well as before the Illinois Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Second, Fifth and Sixth Circuits and the U.S. District Courts for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern District of Michigan and the Northern, Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. Mr. Karasik graduated in the top 4% of his class at the Washington University School of Law and was a member and senior editor of the Washington University Law Review as well as a member of the Order of the Coif and a research assistant to renowned constitutional law scholar Professor Jules Gerard. He also holds an A.B.D in English Literature from the University of Virginia and an M.Litt in literature from Edinburgh University, Scotland. He received his BA degree, magna cum laude, from the College of William & Mary, where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society.
