Janet I. Levine

As one of the country's leading white collar criminal defense lawyers, much of Levine's work is confidential and highly sensitive.

Currently on her docket are clients subject to a grand jury investigation alleging kickbacks, interlocking ownership and fraud, a global securities fraud and market manipulation investigation, and an international money laundering and bribery investigation.

That's typical for the Kendall Brill & Kelly partner, who recently joined the firm from Crowell & Moring LLP where she was the white collar and regulatory group and trial practice chair.

For years, Levine has been a thought leader in the nation's white collar bar and gained recognition for her work trying and settling Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matters.

She is a member of the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section Council, which she once chaired.

"I do a lot of work with the criminal section of the ABA," she said. "It enables me to focus on the issues of interest to me: sentencing, reentry, prison issues. The core criminal issues; the things that I don't deal with in my practice, but ask whether we're a fair society."

Levine developed an early interest in criminal law and spent part of her career in the 1980s serving as a federal public defender.

Recently, she's spent time doing pro bono work outside of her day-to-day practice: helping the homeless.

"A team of Crowell lawyers have been working with Public Counsel looking at issues arising from policing on the Metro trains," she said about her work.

The team of lawyers is working to protect indigent transit riders against racial discrimination on the public train system. Pending now is a public records request about policing practices on the trains.

"The more you practice law, it gets more interesting, not less interesting," Levine said. "The practice of law is almost like a gift: You can do really good things for people."

-- Nicolas Sonnenburg