Steve Perlmutter is a partner in the Trial & Appellate Group in our Boston office. He has successfully litigated, tried and defended on appeal many of the major Voting Rights Act cases in the First Circuit. These cases include:

United States v. City of Lawrence, C.A. No. 98-12256-WGY (D. Mass.)

Vecinos De Barrio Uno v. City of Holyoke, 880 F. Supp. 991 (D. Mass. 1991), vacated

Vecinos De Barrio Uno v. City of Holyoke, 72 F.3d 973 (1st Cir. 1995)

Vecinos De Barrio Uno v. City of Holyoke, 960 F. Supp. 515 (D. Mass. 1997)

Black Political Task Force v. Connolly, 679 F. Supp. 109 (D. Mass. 1988) (three-judge court)

Latino Political Action Committee v. City of Boston, 609 F. Supp. 739 (D. Mass. 1985), affirmed, 784 F.2d 405 (1st Cir. 1986)

Mr. Perlmutter, through this experience, has become well versed in the law under the Voting Rights Act and knows how to identify and marshall the facts necessary to construct a successful defense of a governmental entity’s electoral structure. His experience with Voting Rights Act cases has made him extremely knowledgeable about the strengths and weaknesses of the statistical models (bivariate ecological regression analysis and extreme case analysis) used by plaintiffs to attempt to prove a violation of the Voting Rights Act. As a result of this experience, he has nationwide contacts with the Voting Rights Act expert witness community.

Mr. Perlmutter has been a trial lawyer for 25 years. During this time, he has litigated and tried numerous cases in the state and federal courts, including many controversial and high-profile civil rights cases brought in Massachusetts over the last 25 years.

Mr. Perlmutter has served as a clinical instructor for the Trial Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School, served as a mediator for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and helped mediate disputes in the Massachusetts state court system. He has also been retained as Special Counsel to The Committee on Professional Responsibility for Clerks of the Courts of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Mr. Perlmutter is a former Chief of Litigation for the Office of the Corporation Counsel for the City of Boston. He is also a recipient of the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers (“NIMLO”) award for Outstanding National Public Service by an Assistant Municipal Attorney. Mr. Perlmutter has held leadership positions within the Boston Bar Association and is a member of the civil litigation committees of the American Bar Association, Boston Bar Association and Massachusetts Bar Association. He has also served as the coeditor of the Massachusetts Governmental Liability Reporter. He received his J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law and his B.A. from American University.

Jim Wade is a partner in the Trial and Appellate Group in our Hartford office. Mr. Wade has been a trial lawyer for more than 30 years and has tried significant cases in many different areas of the law. In the voting rights arena, he tried and argued on appeal to the United States Supreme Court the seminal congressional redistricting case of Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U.S. 735 (1973). Mr. Wade has been involved with congressional and state legislative redistricting for over 20 years. He is a fellow of the American College of Trial Attorneys and a graduate from Yale University and the University of Virginia Law School.

Michael Lurie is Counsel in the Trial and Appellate Group in our Boston office. He attended Tufts University as an undergraduate and received his J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law. Mr. Lurie has more than ten years of experience in complex litigation matters. He has handled matters both at trial in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Superior Court, and he has also been primarily responsible for appellate matters before the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

Mr. Lurie, along with Mr. Perlmutter, has represented the cities of Holyoke and Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the Vecinos de Barrio Uno and United States v. City of Lawrence matters at both the district court and circuit court levels. He has focused his efforts in those matters on the statistical evidence advanced by plantiffs to demonstrate the impact of a particular voting structure on the opportunity to participate in the electoral process and elect candidates of choice, and on the relationship between the so-called senate factors and claimed violations of Section 2 of the act.

Attorneys Perlmutter, Wade and Lurie are supported in the defense of voting rights cases by the 55 attorneys and numerous paralegals in our Trial and Appellate Group in our Boston, Hartford, Stamford, Greenwich and New York City offices.