About Leslie Berman

Ms. Leslie Berman, former law clerk to United States District Judge James T. Trimble, Jr. (2000-2001), United States Magistrate Judge Alonzo P. Wilson (2007), and United States Magistrate Judge Kathy Kay (December 2007-February 2008), has practiced law in New York, New Jersey, and Louisiana since 1993, and taught law in England and Louisiana from 1994-2002. Ms. Berman’s arts, culture, and entertainment clients include individuals, businesses and nonprofit organizations with local, regional, national and international concerns.

Ms. Berman graduated from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York, where she was Senior Editor of the Law Review in 1992-1993. Her Law Review note, “H, O, P Spells Trouble for Foreign Performing Artists: A Proposal to Correct the Anomalous Award of Temporary Employment Visas to Non-Employees,” analyzed the misapplication of non-immigrant work visa status to the arts and entertainment industries’ independent contractors — a subject that remains timely today. Following law school, she became a doctoral candidate in legal philosophy and a law, feminism and media studies tutor for visiting student programs, at New College, University of Oxford, U.K.

Since relocating to Louisiana, Ms. Berman has been a Visiting Scholar at Tulane University’s Newcomb College Center for Research on Women, a Visiting Lecturer in McNeese State University’s Women’s Studies and Management, Marketing and Business programs, and an adjunct at Herzing College.

Prior to attending law school, Ms. Berman was an arts editor and a freelance music critic for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, New York Newsday, City Limits (UK) and The New York Times, among many others in New York and London, and a folk music DJ on NY-area alternative radio station WFMU. She's contributed music journalism chapters to Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap, to Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, and to Not Necessarily the New Age, as well as liner notes for enough folk and pop albums to join the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and to vote in the Grammys. Ms. Berman continues to write about music for local and national publications as circumstances allow.

Ms. Berman’s interest in folk music began in the mid-1960s “folk scare” when she learned “Rock Island Line” from a summer camp jug band, and studied guitar with Sonny Ochs (with whom she later collaborated on the Phil Ochs Songwriters’ Workshops, a program of seminars on the folk music business for fledgling performers). She went on to volunteer at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the Fox Hollow Folk Festival, the Mariposa Folk Festival, and others, which segued into professional work as a producer, director, publicist and consultant for coffeehouses, clubs, arts and politics benefit concerts, the Long Island Jewish Arts Festival, the Jewish Ethnic Music Festival, and the Great Hudson River Revival.

Ms. Berman worked for Tomato Records as a publicity assistant during its first incarnation, and as a grants writer for a fundraising consulting firm whose clients included the Committee to Combat Huntington’s Disease (which became the Huntington's Disease Society of America). In 1984, Ms. Berman and English folksinger Heather Wood formed a partnership to publish the Grass Roots International Folk Resource Directory (which ran to three editions).

Ms. Berman is an active board member of numerous arts, professional, and social change organizations in North America and Lake Charles, Louisiana. She is past president of the International Folk Music and Dance Alliance, co-founder and president of the Music Museum of Southwest Louisiana, co-founder and past vice-president of the Lake Charles Public Radio Association (which regained access to national public radio after two stations serving Lake Charles were bumped by the Christian right’s American Family Radio network), and past president and present board member of Camp Fire Southwest Louisiana Council.

Further details on Leslie Berman's extensive careers in law and music may be found in her resume (pdf format).