Ben Eisman

Background

About Ben Eisman

I’m a lawyer, writer, and educator, with wide-ranging experience in the private sector, government, and academe. CAREER HIGHLIGHTS My short fiction has earned honorable mention from Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prizes, appearing in Commentary Magazine, Sewanee Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. I was awarded full scholarship to the MFA program at Johns Hopkins, and the Sankey Prize for outstanding graduate in fiction. As an AUSA at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in DC, I first-chaired forty trials, argued appeals before the DC Circuit and DC Court of Appeals, and approached the task with a keen sense of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I. I hope I did justice. After a long hiatus to focus on my writing, I'm now happy to be back at DOJ in the Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Assistance and Training, where I focus on Europe. As facilitator of the University President’s reading group at Johns Hopkins University, and as a teaching fellow in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, I challenged my students and interlocutors, and was challenged by them in return. We liked each other anyway. As a litigator at Skadden Arps LLP and Perkins Coie LLP, I crafted winning briefs in high-stakes cases, sweated out document productions, questioned the meaning of life, and only occasionally slept on the floor. As a lecturer in international human rights law in Ethiopia, I introduced students to the socratic method, and maintained integrity to the subject within a politically fraught environment. I was also paid in cash, and kept lots of it in my socks. As a dad to two young kids, I’ve kept my yelling to minimum, adhere to a leave-no-one-behind policy while hiking and canoeing, and lose gracefully at Connect Four. CONTACT ME ben.eisman@gmail.com ⏐ 619.822.3901