Ira Lee Sorkin

Ira Lee Sorkin (born May 30, 1943) is an American attorney. He is best known for representing Bernard Madoff, the American businessman who has pleaded guilty to perpetrating the largest investor fraud ever committed by a single person.

Sorkin grew up in Manhasset, NY and graduated from Manhasset High School in 1961. He was president of his senior class, starting center on the football team and the star shot-put of the track and field team. He received his B.A. from Tulane University in 1965 and his J.D. from The George Washington University Law School in 1968.

Sorkin began his legal career as a summer intern in the office of the District Attorney for Brooklyn, New York in 1966 followed by a second summer internship in the United States Attorney’s office in Manhattan in 1967. When he graduated law school, his first job was as a trial attorney in New York with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Thereafter, Mr. Sorkin served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and then Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in the 1970s. From 1984 to 1986 he worked as the Director of the SEC’s New York office. In 1995 and 1996, he also served as the Chief Legal Officer of Nomura Securities, a member firm of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1977, he became a defense attorney.

While in the United States Attorney’s Office:

I tried 15 cases in 11 months.... In those days, we tried everything — stolen mail cases, food stamp cases. These days, if you're prosecutor for five years, you might get to try five cases.

One of his first private clients was Rupert Murdoch in the law firm of Howard Squadron, Theodore Ellenoff and Stanley Plesent. When the firm merged, he joined as a partner at Carter Ledyard & Milburn. Thereafter in 2004, Mr. Sorkin joined the New York Office of Dickstein Shapiro, a large American law firm.^[1]. On November 8, 2010, Mr. Sorkin left Dickstein Shapiro along with four otherlawyers to join New Jersey based law firm Lowenstein Sandler as a partner.

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