Myles D. Berman, a partner with Foley & Lardner LLP, is a member of the firm's Government & Public Policy and Environmental Regulation Practices and the Energy Industry Team. He is also a director of the firm's Political Action Committee.
Mr. Berman has more than 29 years of experience in corporate, real estate and financial transactions, and regularly represents clients before federal, state and local governments and agencies.
Before joining Foley, Mr. Berman was group head of Altheimer & Gray's Government Department, where he co-chaired the firm's Government Affairs/Public Affairs practice and chaired the firm's Environmental Law practice.
Mr. Berman spent 15 years as an adjunct professor of law at Chicago's Northwestern University School of Law, and nearly 20 years as an adjunct professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana. A field associate for the Brookings Institution's five-year study of the Community Development Block Grant Program, Mr. Berman was also a research associate at Northwestern University's Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research in the early 1980s.
Mr. Berman received his law degree from Northwestern in 1983, a master's degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Urbana-Champaign in 1979, and his bachelor's degree, cum laude with college honors, in 1974.
A member of the Chicago office's Pro Bono Committee, Mr. Berman is a member of The Economic Club of Chicago and sits on the boards of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. (board chair, 2002), the Public Interest Law Initiative (board president, 2002 - 2004), and the boards of Business and Professional People for the Public Interest ("BPI"), the Anti-Defamation League, the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Chicago and the Illinois Equal Justice Commission. He also serves, pro bono, as a counselor to the Board of Governors of the City Club of Chicago. A frequent lecturer and author, he has chaired several faculties on real estate-related matters for the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education, and has spoken at the American Bar Association's National Meeting, the Law Education Institute's National CLE Course, and conferences of the American Planning Association. Mr. Berman co-authored a chapter of the Attorney's Practice Guide to Negotiations, 2nd Edition, (Clark Boardman & Callaghan, 1995).
Mr. Berman has been Peer Review Rated as AV® Preeminent™, the highest performance rating in Martindale-Hubbell's peer review rating system. He has been nominated by his peers to the 2005 and 2007 - 2012 lists of Illinois Super Lawyers® - where he has been named one of 12 Illinois Super Lawyers in political law, and one of 15 statewide in government relations.*
Mr. Berman is a member of the American, Illinois State and Chicago Bar Associations and the Chicago Council of Lawyers. He is admitted to practice in Illinois and before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and is a registered lobbyist pursuant to applicable state, county and local laws.
*The Illinois Supreme Court does not recognize certifications of specialties in the practice of law and no award or recognition is a requirement to practice law in Illinois.