Please join us for the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Fall Institute on Friday, November 3, 2023 at the Madison Hotel, 1177 15th Street, Washington, DC. Last year, 15 Fellow Travelers attended this conference together and then we all went out to Carmine’s Italian Restaurant for an evening of camaraderie, stories, laughter – and great food! Let’s do it again!
I am honored to serve as Co-Chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section Reentry & Collateral Consequences Committee. – Jeff
Our friend and White Collar Week podcast guest Christopher Poulos, Executive Director of Center for Justice and Human Dignity , has organized this important conference. It is especially on-point for Fellow Travelers and all members of the white collar justice community. We will be sending a contingent and hope to see you there!
“Join us on October 16-17, 2023 at Rewriting the Sentence II Summit on Alternatives to Incarceration in Washington, D.C. to explore the future of effective innovations in the criminal legal system.
Featured speakers include United States Sentencing Commission Chairman Judge Carlton Reeves, Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters, and Dr. Alisha Moreland-Capuia, Founder and Director of the Institute for Trauma-Informed Systems Change at McLean/Harvard.”
Keri Blakinger is a friend of our ministry and support group. She is a staff writer for The Marshall Project whose work focuses on prisons and jails. She previously covered criminal justice for the Houston Chronicle, and her work has appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, VICE, the New York Daily News and The New York Times. She is The Marshall Project’s first formerly incarcerated reporter. Her memoir, “Corrections in Ink“, comes out in June 2022; I’ve already pre-ordered my copy on Amazon and I can’t wait to read it. – Jeff Grant
When I was in prison, books sometimes felt like the only untainted connection to a past life.
Sure, there were friends and family who visit visited, bringing along our shared memories from the free world. But they also brought with them the knowledge that I was in prison, and I could see in their eyes how it colored every interaction. The people I met in books did not know that about me. And maybe that was part of why treasured I them so much.
During the 21 months I spent behind bars, I read obsessively — sometimes 20 or more books a month. I tore through Kazuo Ishiguro, David Foster Wallace, Jennifer Egan, and Alice Walker, checking off title after title at a fever pace as if each finished page were another thread in a literal lifeline to freedom.
When I wasn’t distracting myself with reading, though, I was writing — filling up yellow legal pads and white printer paper. For most of the time I was behind bars, I told myself that I would write a book of my own. That was back in 2012 — but last year I finally did. It’s called Corrections in Ink and it comes out this month. Right now, I’m trying to get as many copies donated to prisoners as I can.
Save the Date: White Collar Support Group — 300th Meeting Online on Zoom. Monday, March 14, 2022, 7 pm ET, 6 pm CT, 5 pm MT, 4 pm PT. Open to directly justice impacted only. Referrals welcome.
_________________________
Dear Fellow Travelers,
Progressive Prison Ministries and St. Joseph’s Mission Church invite you to join our Confidential Online White Collar Support Group. We hold our group meetings on Monday evenings, 7 pm ET. 6 pm CT, 5 pm MT, 4 pm PT.
We are doing something truly groundbreaking! This is the world’s first Confidential Online White Collar Support Group. As this support group is run by ordained clergy as part of a program of pastoral care and confession, we expect and believe it falls under clergy privilege laws.
We are a community of individuals, families and groups with white collar justice issues who have a desire to take responsibility for our actions and the wreckage we caused, make amends, and move forward in new way of life centered on hope, care, compassion, tolerance and empathy. Our experience shows us that many of us are suffering in silence with shame, remorse, and deep regret. Many of us have been stigmatized by our own families, friends and communities, and the business community. Our goal is to learn and evolve into a new spiritual way of life and to reach out in service to others. This is an important thing we are doing!
Over 400 Fellow Travelers have participated in our support group meetings from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin — and Canada, South America, Europe and the Caribbean. All have agreed this has been a valuable, important experience in which everyone feels less alone, and gratified in the opportunity to talk about things in a safe space only we could understand.
We have formed agreements as to confidentiality, anonymity and civility, and have a basic agenda for each meeting:
1. Welcome 2. Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” 3. Short Member Introductions, if we have new member(s) 4. Announcements & Resource Sharing 5. Guest Speaker and/or Lead on Topic 6. Member Sharing 7. Closing
Login Instructions and Link are sent out weekly. We have set up an account with Zoom for our group, and you can log in via video on a computer, tablet or smart phone that is equipped with a camera, or audio only via phone. Please use headphones if you can so that we can minimize feedback and background noise. Each meeting will have a different meeting number to best provide confidentiality.
For Newcomers, I (or the night’s host) will be online fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the meeting. Zoom works wonderfully, however, it might take a little time to get comfortable with on your end if you’ve never been on this platform.
Thank you for referring other justice-impacted people and families: info@prisonist.org. Fellow Traveler volunteers handle information requests and intakes with empathy and compassion.
Press & media inquiries: press@grantlaw.com. A Fellow Traveler volunteer who is a public relations professional handles these inquiries.
If you have suggestions for other Fellow Travelers to join this group, please contact us to discuss. Our goal is to be inclusive.
IMPORTANT!: If you are currently on supervised release, probation or parole, it is important that you first discuss this with your P.O. To assist in this regard, information about our ministry is available on prisonist.org.
Please feel free to contact us if you would like to join in our next meeting, or with any questions you might have regarding this group, its meetings, or anything else whatsoever.
Please join us on Oct. 19, 2021, 12:45 pm, for Jeff’s plenary ethics presentation, “Pleasing Everybody Pleases Nobody,” at the 16th Annual Delaware Trust Conference, sponsored by The Delaware Bankers Association and The Delaware Financial Education Alliance.
Pleasing Everybody Pleases Nobody – We are often faced with pressure to bend the rules to make customers, clients and colleagues happy… sometimes to disastrous results.
Chase Center on the Riverfront, 815 Justison Street, Wilmington, Delaware 19801
Jeff Grant is on a mission. After a hiatus from practicing law, he is once again in private practice in New York and is committed to using his legal expertise and life experience to benefit others.
Jeff provides a broad range of legal services in a highly attentive, personalized manner. They include private general counsel, white collar crisis management to individuals and families, services to family-owned and closely-held businesses, plus support to special situation and pro bono clients.
For more than 20 years, Jeff served as managing attorney of a 20+ employee law firm headquartered in New York City and then Westchester County, New York. The firm’s practice areas included representing family-owned and closely-held businesses and their owners, business and real estate transactions, trusts and estates, and litigation.
Jeff also served as outside general counsel to large family-owned real estate equities and management and brokerage organizations. In this role, he retained, coordinated, and oversaw the work of many specialty law firms, including white collar defense firms.
After an addiction to prescription opioids and serving almost 14 months in Federal prison (2006 – 07) for a white collar crime he committed while an attorney, Jeff started his own reentry. He earned a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, majoring in Social Ethics. After graduating, Jeff was called to serve at an inner city church in Bridgeport, CT as Associate Minister and Director of Prison Ministries. He then co-founded Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc. (Greenwich, CT), the world’s first ministry devoted to serving the white collar justice community.
The author is a member of our White Collar Support Group that meets online on Monday evenings. He was sentenced to four years imprisonment for a white collar crime, but was released for six months pending his appeal. When he lost his appeal, he was ordered to surrender to the U.S. Marshals whereupon he was immediately put on “diesel therapy”. That is, he has been shuttled around from prison to prison on buses and planes for over six months, and still has not arrived at his designated facility.
_________________________
Just dropping a note to all and letting you know that I’m “In Transit” at a transfer station in XXXX. Been here a about two weeks and not sure when I’ll be moving on but I do know that I’ll be heading back to my last destination prior to my release pending the Appeal (which I obviously lost). It was nice to be back home for six months starting last July. Got a lot taken care of at home and actually starting some consulting work in my industry – good sign. I hope that door will still be open when I get out again.
What follows are from my notes I’ve put together while living in my “room” here in XXXX. Also, this “email” service is very primitive with almost no editing capability, unable to cut-and-paste, etc. so, many thoughts I’ve listed here may seem disjointed and non-sensicle (all, my excuse for sounding so illiterate as I sometimes do!). I’m also going to let everything hang out here. So, I hope what I’ve got to say doesn’t make anyone too uncomfortable. I don’t want sympathy, really, I don’t want that. I just want it to be known, these things we’ve endured. And then think of how much of this is really necessary and how much may be truelly damaging and unecessary. Just know that I’m ok and I have survived.
To bring some of you up to speed as to what’s happened since I left FCI XXXX at the end of June 2020:
My attorneys getting me released “Pending my sentencing appeal” which we had now been waiting almost two year to be heard. The first few months home I spent re-adjusting and looking for work. I started to play with Day and Swing Trading on line and got familiar with Ameritrades “Think-or-Swim” trading program and became pretty AmeriTrade’s with it, even made a few bucks. Then got a call from a friend who runs a plant in XXXX. He said they needed someone to help with the regulatory side of things and were hoping I would come on board as an independent consultant for this. This was more or less a full time consulting position, really a perfect setup for to get reconnected with the industry – good pay as well – a very fortunate opportunity. I explained that I was still waiting for my appeal to be heard and was expecting a favorable outcome. They understood and still accepted me onboard starting sometime in September. Things were going very well, even spotted incorrect filters installed which saved them from a potentially very embarrassing situation during an FDA audit. Overall I proved a good asset for them. Then I learned we lost the appeal early in December and I’d be heading back to prison to finish my sentence, devastating.
Just prior to getting this devastating verdict, I had offered our local high school another “Astronomy Night” with my telescope for the science students to observe the upcoming conjunction of Saturn and Mars with the Moon, a rar event perfectly positioned for viewing this December night. All the students were come to our home where we were setup for this viewing. That Day we received the verdict of the lost appeal so needless to say i was devastated and barely able to function, certainly feeling unable to host these students. I felt terrible about this but fortunately the wind picked up at the last minute which made it just too difficult to setup the telescope. I sadly canceled the viewing at the last minute but saw no other choice, especially because of the way I was feeling. My loss, everyone’s loss-
Also around this time I found out that I somehow contracted latent TB, care of my fist stay at XXX. Who gets TB?! What a thing to have to deal with now! Fortunately, TB is now curable so I got on a heavy dose of special meds that I had to take daily for four months – done!
To add to things, another difficult issue that came up at this time was a son suddenly dealling with an acute mental crisis which required all our resources to deal with. It is spiritually difficult and sad issue for any family and the timing for us couldn’t have be worse except for the fact that I was fortunate to be at home to deal with it, barely. We got him the treatment he needed and is fortunately doing very well at this time.
To say the end of the year was a difficult time would be an understatement. The weight on my shoulders was overwhelming and desperate. The most fortunate thing out of so much of that period was the very positive re-introduction to my industry thought the consulting work and the fortunate successful resolution to a family healh crises. For this I feel ever so grateful to have had that brief home interlude.
Then came my time to “re-enter”…
Diesel Therapy:
It’s been a hell of a ride since I came back in the system, starting out first in XXXX in XXXX for a few weeks (nightmare) and then transferring to a private prison for another six months (also horrible). Being caught in the system during COVID has generated this increased movement of inmates called “Diesel Therapy”. This Diesel Therapy is comprised of terrible repetitive cycle between institutions (most often of inmates between facilities other than Bureau of Prisons all in the view of segregating people and or quarantining them between locations. Often inmates are moved from one private prison to another and then back to that same private prison again. It’s really an endless cycle in dealing with the ever increasing federal population. Most of this move, again is between these private institutions because the BOP had shut their doors due to COVID in an effort to stop any further out-breaks in them. By the way, I had watched an inmate, near the beginning while I was in XXXX late one night, fall-out (drop to his knees gasping for breath and being attended to by CO’s and then found that he had died the next day (young guy too!). It was terrifying, it was real! (sorry, I know, I need to start using new expletives). This movement is done every time someone or group is moved or if someone in your group is suspected of having COVID.
Added together I’ve probably quarantined, or rather been in “solitary confinement” locked in a cell either alone or with another, a total of 2-3 months now. If I hadn’t won that ‘release bending appeal” I would never had been subjecting to all the “diesel therapy” I’ve experienced, I would have simply remained at XXXX, still worth the postponement of time served and diesel therapy/quarantine).
After leaving the private prison in XXXX I was flown to a USP in XXXX. and held in this castle-like prison (everything but the mote, beautiful to see, horrible to stay in (look it up). I spent two weeks there in an upper dungeon-like section on the third floor with no AC, sticking, sweating with my bunky with only out for a shower every other day during the week only (screw you if your day is a Thursday – don’t wash again till Monday), Man. Fortunately a good bunky, that time. Much demoralizing things…. Main passage-ways are wide, Spanish glaze tiled floors and walls with beautiful detailed archliberal arches with fine detail/gargoyles… Great for a Halloween Haunted House, not much else.
Bus transport outside these private prisons, or really between any institution in the federal system, usually is comprised of getting on a large Greyhound type bus and taken to an airport for travel on what is called “Con-Air” (similar to the movie Con-Air). All of it a practice in ultimate humility. All inmates moving are fully Chain-and-Shackled, wrist and ankles and then a chain around the waist attached to the wrist-cuffs so no nose-picking or scratching your ass (don’t even think about having to shit). You are treated as the convict you are, thoroughly beneath your captors who are the US Marshals – US Ground Marshals and US Air Marshals (for the plane). These are very large men who look amped up on steroids, very scary looking, all looking like they’re waiting for the IRA or Colombian Cartel to come out from the nearest hedge grove or us inmates to somehow through off our shackles and charge. These guys stand around the buses as they pull up on the tarmac or up to the plane. This is where we are all filed out in front of the plane, Body checked again and eventually shuttled about. All so intimidating, all so seemingly overboard. I’ll never book that flight again, nor recommend it!
Interlude:
Something else I need to share. An episode that took place shortly after we left XXXX on our way to XXXX airport. We stopped at this large service station for diesel designed for large rig vehicles. As we sat their waiting for our bus to be fueled, looking our windows…
SPIDERS!!!
Large, bulbous spiders out there, hundreds of them at every pump! All moving, between, above, around. I don’t know if it was the heat or the moisture but they were all Moving around their webs, dropping down from the nest’s in the canopy above, arcing, catching an invisible thread, but moving. I’ve never seen anything like it! And from the look and sounds of my fellow shacklties, either had they. We were all staining and turning ourselves (as best we could) to watch this herd of beasts outside our windows. The only thing that could be worse is if somehow some of them got in! Could you imagine?! I could just see it, this large two inch spider crawling around my shoulder and me shackled, unable to do a thing but squirm and watch. I also couldn’t imagine being out there trying to fill my tank! NO WAY! It was really terrifying. I mean, I love to watch these creatures in a contained jar but these were all OUT there, huge and massing. I can almost hear them breathing! I mean – if that were my station I would, or rather would have paid someone to power wash and fumigate the place! So I’m watching this one right outside my window that appears to float slowing down some invisible thread then catch some other mysterious fiber, and then somehow attaching to our bus, then slowly crawl to the cleft of my window and hunkered down, bracing against the wind as we finally took off and he (because I’m sure it was a he) stayed. Not comfortable with that.
Ok, so I’ve now been HERE two weeks – quarantined – isolated – in lock-down except that hour a day for calls and these emails.
No commissary, not cards, nothing but a few books to choose from… I was told on Thursday that my transport to XXX should be leaving the middle of next week, then the next day (Friday) I was told that XXXX is not even on the list for next week. So, maybe the following week?!
Sleep:
Sleep and dreams aren’t a concern, it’s awakening that terrifies me. As I sleep, when I can which is not often and few between, my dreams are my escape (truly!). They’re usually of great meaning or at least seem to be, of comfortable recognitions and sweet reunions. People I’ve hoped to see, connections re-established – so much meaning. And then the fog of my sleep begins to lift and reality, which seams less real than the dreams begin to filter in, first, disorienting but then the reality of it begins to appear and leaves me desperately trying to crawl back to the sands of sleep, desperately trying to hold off the approaching reality of my present state. That peaceful wakefulness that quickly crashes to reality and confusion of present state. Oh, how did I ever get so far from home?
Looks like I’m out of “character” usage – I’ve written myself out!
After nearly two decades without practicing, Jeff Grant got his law license back this May.
He served over a year in prison for lying about office space to get federal relief money after 9/11.
He then went to seminary and opened a ministry serving white-collar defendants.
Jeff Grant started his law career the way many young lawyers would dream of starting. He launched his own firm shortly after graduating from New York Law School in 1981 and grew it, first in Manhattan and then in Westchester County, adding employees and clients. He served as outside general counsel to two large real-estate companies and kept adding staff.
But then the cracks appeared.
After rupturing his Achilles tendon in a basketball game in 1992, he was prescribed opioids for pain relief. He said he quickly became addicted and continued to take them daily for the next decade.
He made a habit of borrowing money from his clients’ escrow accounts to cover payroll, which he was in danger of not paying because of his personal spending habits and inattention to the business.
And after the attacks on September 11, 2001, he lied about his office location on an application for a low-interest Small Business Administration loan. He wrote that he had a satellite office just a few blocks from ground zero, but he had only an agreement with another firm in that building to use a conference room, which he had never used. He received a $247,000 loan and used it to cover personal credit cards, which he said were used to keep his firm afloat, and other personal expenses.
A New York attorney grievance committee launched an ethics investigation into his misuse of client funds, while federal prosecutors initiated a criminal inquiry over the loan.
Grant was disbarred in December 2002, five months after surrendering his legal license. He pleaded guilty to one count each of wire fraud and money laundering and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2006. In the interim, he went to rehab, and he said he has stayed sober since.
On the road to recovery
He served nearly 14 months in a low-security prison, where he attended services for a range of religions: Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. After he was released in 2007, Grant spent a couple of years volunteering. Then a friend recommended he attend seminary. Grant was hesitant.
“I was a Jewish kid from Long Island,” he said. “I didn’t even know what it was.”
But he enrolled in Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, earning his master of divinity in 2012. He accepted a position as an associate minister later that year in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and later became an ordained minister in an Independent Catholic church (not affiliated with Roman Catholic). He said he was also baptized as a Protestant and still identifies with Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism.
In 2013, he and his wife founded Progressive Prison Ministries in Greenwich, Connecticut. He says it’s the world’s first ministry helping people prosecuted for white-collar crimes. His work came to include mentoring, career counseling, and spiritual support.
But something was missing, he said.
He said that while he loved doing “the good work,” it could get frustrating. The people Grant ministered to always had legal questions, he said, but he was barred from giving legal advice.
In 2018, he decided to try to get his law license back.
‘Light at the end of this crazy tunnel’
Grant submitted a motion for reinstatement to the New York State Bar at the beginning of 2019 that included a tell-all, 10,000-word narrative of how he’d unraveled his life and then worked to put it back together.
The committee on character and fitness investigated him — lawyers need to show remorse and prove that they’ve changed and are trustworthy and honest in order to be reinstated — and recommended his approval in October 2020. But a state court still needed to officially OK it.
Every day for the next several months, Grant checked to see if his name appeared on the court’s docket.
Then, on May 5, Grant saw it: He was a lawyer again, effective immediately.
He hasn’t struggled to find work since, he said.
Grant says he’s one of the very few practicing attorneys who have been prosecuted and incarcerated for white-collar crimes. His clients seek him out because of his past, he said.
“It brings hope and comfort that there actually might be light at the end of this crazy tunnel,” he said.
Some of his old clients even gave him a shout when he shared the news that he had his license back, asking for him to represent them once again.
Four decades after graduating from law school, Grant says he feels content.
“This might be the first time in my life where I feel like I’ve arrived at where God needs me to be,” he said.
_________________________
Jeffrey D. Grant, Esq.
GrantLaw, PLLC, 43 West 43rd Street, Suite 108, New York, NY 10036-7424
Now again in private practice, Jeff is an attorney and counselor-at-law providing private general counsel, legal crisis management, and dispute strategy and management services to individuals and families, real estate organizations, family-owned and closely-held businesses, the white collar justice community, and special situation and pro bono clients.
For over 20 years Jeff served as managing attorney of a 20+ employee law firm headquartered in New York City, and then Westchester County, NY. Among other practice areas, the firm engaged in representation of family-owned/closely held businesses and their owners, business and real estate transactions, trusts and estates, and litigation. Jeff also served as outside General Counsel to large family-owned real estate equities, management and brokerage organizations, in which role he retained, coordinated and oversaw the work of many specialty law firms, including white collar defense firms.
Congratulations to Journalist and Fellow Traveler Chandra Bozelko on winning this prestigious award. Chandra is a member of our online White Collar Support Group that meets on Zoom on Monday evenings.
_________________________
“In online column writing, the winner is Chandra Bozelko of Gannett/ MoreContentNow for The Outlaw: Insider Takes on Criminal Justice, which, according to the judges: contained masterful writing on compelling, eye-opening subjects. She knows how to grab the reader, and how tell the stories as only she can do…”
When lawyers through greed or hubris or desperation become white-collar criminals – sent to prison and disbarred – their stories often feel like car crashes. We gape at the wreckage of their lives and move on.
But what happens afterwards, once they’ve done their time? How do they pick up the pieces?
Jeffrey Grant found a path to redemption. Seventeen years after he pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $247,000 through a 9/11 disaster relief loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York earlier this month reinstated his law license.
“I’m beyond excited, but I also take the responsibility very seriously,” he told me. “I’m really grateful for a second chance.”
His journey is extraordinary, from opioid-addicted real estate lawyer to federal prison inmate to seminary student to head of a criminal justice nonprofit. And now, at age 64, he has come full circle to practice law again.
But this time around, he intends to do it very differently.
A 1981 New York Law School grad, Grant, before everything fell apart, headed his own 20-employee firm, Jeffrey D. Grant & Associates, in Mamaroneck, New York, serving as outside general counsel to large real estate companies.
“I viewed life as a competition,” he said, describing himself as akin to “a paid assassin.”
“It was me against everyone else, or me and my client against everyone else.”
After a sports injury, he was prescribed the painkiller Demerol and over the course of a decade, he became addicted to prescription opioids.
When he couldn’t meet payroll for his firm, he borrowed money from client escrow accounts. With a New York state attorney grievance committee investigation pending, he surrendered his law license on July 28, 2002. That night, he attempted suicide by overdose, he told me.
He wound up in rehab, embracing recovery with three meetings a day. He’s been clean and sober ever since.
But his past caught up with him in 2004, when he learned there was a warrant for his arrest. “No one was more surprised than me,” Grant said. Once informed of the charges, though, it “all came rushing back.”
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, he had applied for federal financial aid and falsely claimed that his firm had an office in New York City. In reality, he merely had an arrangement to use a conference room on occasion in the city.
Did he somehow convince himself this qualified? I asked. “I was a lawyer who represented sophisticated businesspeople,” he said. “I knew better.”
“There’s no question drugs had a lot to do with it, but I can’t blame the drugs,” he continued. “I was desperate, clutching at anything I could.”
Grant served 14 months at a low security prison in White Deer, Pennsylvania – but it was a “real prison with bars,” he said, not one of the so-called Club Fed camps where white-collar offenders typically do their time.
As a “privileged kid from the suburbs,” he said, “I had to learn hard lessons there. But it was exactly what I needed to wipe the last smirk off my face.”
Released in 2007, he knew he wanted to use his experiences to help others. He’s Jewish, but a pastor he knew suggested he consider attending a seminary.
“I didn’t know what that meant,” Grant recalled. (His first reaction: Is that where you train to be a monk?) But he discovered that seminaries, at least the progressive ones, “are basically places where you learn about social justice and faith.”
In 2012, he earned a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He’s been baptized, but he’s also still a Jew. “I’m a double-belonger,” he said.
Grant and his wife Lynn Springer went on to co-found Progressive Prison Ministries. Based in Greenwich, Connecticut, they say it’s the world’s first ministry focused on serving the white-collar justice community.
It includes a weekly white-collar online support group for people “who have a desire to take responsibility for our actions and the wreckage we caused, make amends, and move forward in new way of life centered on hope, care, compassion, tolerance and empathy.” More than 310 people around the country have participated, according to the group’s website.
From 2016 to 2019, Grant also served as the executive director of Family ReEntry, a criminal justice nonprofit with offices and programs in eight Connecticut cities.
Three years ago, he began the process of getting his law license back. The first step was taking the multi-state professional responsibility exam and completing CLE. He also submitted “about 12 inches of paperwork,” he said, including his personal story.
He wrote 14,000 words. “I wanted to tell them everything, the whole story, warts and all,” he said. “It didn’t make a difference to me if strategically it was the right thing to do.” He added, “I let go of the outcome.”
He had a hearing via videoconference last May. “I was scared,” Grant said, but he was surprised to find that the panel members questioning him were “kind.”
“They were thorough and probing, but they were not out to tank me. They were supportive,” he said. “It helped me remember the best parts of being a lawyer.”
On May 5, his license was officially reinstated, and he promptly launched GrantLaw PLLC. With an office on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, he’s offering his services as a private general counsel specializing in white-collar crisis management.
That might include helping a white-collar defendant interview defense lawyers and other specialized counsel, reviewing the lawyers’ work product and billing, and acting as a sounding board, all with the goal of achieving a better and more-cost-efficient outcome.
“Most white-collar defendants are very bright, who have a lot of professional experience and are highly educated,” Grant said. “They don’t realize they’re in trauma – and are making generally very bad decisions while in trauma.”
They need “someone who understands trauma,” he said, “and somebody to trust.”
Given his life experiences, it’s hard for me to imagine a lawyer more uniquely qualified.
Jenna Greene writes about legal business and culture, taking a broad look at trends in the profession, faces behind the cases, and quirky courtroom dramas. A longtime chronicler of the legal industry and high-profile litigation, she lives in Northern California. Reach Greene at jenna.greene@thomsonreuters.com.
Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
