Susan Eisenberg, Cozen O'Connor's Miami office managing partner. Photo: Andrew Milne

Susan Eisenberg has no hesitations about attributing her success to an alignment of good fortune.

“What's the saying? … Timing is everything,” she said of her breakthrough moment as a labor and employment attorney.

Eisenberg was working as an associate at Akerman Senterfitt at the time, and under the tutelage of her mentor Irving Miller, the former regional attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Miami office, she found her hands full following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991.

Eisenberg said because the federal act expanded the scope of civil rights laws and enabled plaintiffs to pursue compensatory damages for discrimination claims, “the whole area just exploded.”

“When I started practicing, like most young litigators, I went into the commercial litigation pool and I was doing everything—any kind of litigation,” she said. “Every day was different.”

But as opportunities within the labor and employment practice stacked up and her hours increased in kind, Eisenberg said, “It just got to the point where I couldn't do anything else.”

“There was so much of that work that it was hard to find time to just do general commercial,” she said. “I liked the fact that it was emerging and that we were making new law. … I liked being able to become a specialist in an area, rather than doing all kinds of different things depending on the day.”

Almost three decades on, Eisenberg's specialization would seem to have paid off. In addition to her position as the head of the Cozen O'Connor law firm's Miami office, she helped to found the Wage and Hour Defense Institute and is currently co-chairing the American Bar Association Section of Labor & Employment Law's annual conference, a responsibility she called “a full-time job in and of itself.”

Eisenberg's capacity to juggle several demanding tasks at once defined her long before she ever stepped foot into a courtroom. After a childhood spent in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan in 1979 with designs on a career in medicine.

“I'm a registered pharmacist. I have kept my license up,” she said. “I worked in a drugstore through high school and college and it was just a natural stepping stone for me.”

Following two years spent working in the field, Eisenberg decided it was time for a much-needed change. Taking into account her aptitude for reading and writing, she resolved to give the LSAT a spin. Soon, she was accepted to study at the University Of Miami School of Law.

“I didn't necessarily go into it saying I'm going to be a litigator,” Eisenberg said. “I just went into it [committed] that l was going to get a law degree.” Having honed her skills in the classroom and found her niche practicing labor and employment law, she'd finally found a career she could see herself in for the long haul.

“Because I do a lot of labor and employment work on the management side, it gives me a little bit of an ability to do both,” she said of her work behind the scenes and in the courtroom. “I do compliance work, I do counseling work … and I do the drafting of executive employment agreements, and handbooks and that kind of thing. It's a nice mix.”

Beyond the intensive nature of the legal field, Eisenberg shared one of her greatest challenges early on was meeting the demands of motherhood, as well as her clients' needs.

“I don't like to use the word 'balance,' because you never balance it,” she said. “My expression always was 'I throw all the balls in the air every morning and I hope none of them drop.'”

She adds, “To try and achieve balance, you're putting too much pressure on yourself. You just can't. Because there are some days where you really need to be 110% a lawyer, and there are some days where you need to be 110% a parent and … you can't always be both at the same time.”

With her children now fully grown and more professional experience under her belt, Eisenberg shared that she tries to channel that expertise to mentor young attorneys undergoing a similar journey.

“I talk to a lot of young women who are just embarking on that … who have young children or are about to have children,” she said. Eisenberg added she's often asked questions such as “Can we do this? What does it look like to do it? And how do we do it?”

“I can tell them now that my children are grown, that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” she said. Eisenberg added the consideration shown to her peers is on full view with her clients as well, and along with her boundless capacity for hard work, it's the quality that's allowed her to thrive within the field.

“I really try and become partners my clients so that I can guide them, understand their business, and help them make good decisions for their business,” she said. “If you work with your clients and you really have their best interests at heart … then you become synonymous with that area of law and people turn to you.”

Susan Eisenberg

Spouse: Steven Eisenberg

Children: Alex, Zach, Hailey and Arielle

Education: University of Miami, J.D., 1986; University of Michigan, B.S., 1979

Experience: Shareholder, Cozen O'Connor, 2015-present; Shareholder, Akerman Senterfitt, 1993-2015; Associate, Akerman Senterfitt, 1986-1993