Linda Kornfeld

Managing Partner

Dickstein Shapiro, L.A. office

Comfort Food:

‘Hot fudge sundaes. I’m a huge chocolate person, so anything with chocolate is always good.’


Staying Healthy:

‘My father has concocted a smoothie for me that supposedly has everything in it that I would ever need to drink in a day. It guarantees that I live to be about 95.’


Pro Bono Work:

‘I represented a woman who had cancer and needed life-saving bone marrow. She was in a brawl with her

insurance company because they said it was too experimental. She got me involved and I dealt with the company to change their position. It was definitely rewarding.’

The Business Journal occasionally checks in with L.A. executives and asks them to describe their day. This week Linda Kornfeld, managing partner of Dickstein Shapiro’s Los Angeles office, walks us through her schedule.

I generally wake up early at 5:30. The first thing I do every morning is take my two dogs out for a walk so they can take care of their business and get a little morning exercise. Both are pound pups. I go to the dog park with them on weekends and the fun thing is that everyone stands around trying to guess what your dog is. My 50-pounder, Molly, is probably a Doberman mix. My 20-pounder, Brownie I have no clue.

I’m also an equestrian. After I walk my dogs and make my daily smoothie if time permits and I don’t have an early meeting I’ll drive to the barn where my horse, Magic, lives. My horse is a complete escape. I exercise him, play with him and clean him up.

After showering I get ready for work and head out to the office. I work in Century City in the twin towers and I live in Century City.

Most mornings, unless I need the car, I’ll walk to work, which is exactly 12 minutes door to door. I walk through the Century City mall and window-shop along the way.

I walk as much as possible.

I have two hats that I wear every day. One hat is the administrative hat, the managing partner of the L.A. office of Dickstein. My other hat is that of a practicing lawyer in the firm. When I arrive, I check in with the office administrator. She is my savior. We’re in the process of growing our business in L.A. We’re a Washington, D.C.-based law firm with offices in D.C. and L.A. I’m responsible for expanding the business here, to add lawyers and diversify the practice.

Now we’ve got a number of offices we’re working to fill. We regularly talk about architectural decisions, furniture, strategy calls, decoration, negotiating deals and employee issues if we need to hire staff.

The other thing I do after touching base with her is to try to walk around the office and check in with people to see what’s up.

Then I finally get to my office, sit down and put on my lawyer hat. As a lawyer what I do is represent different Fortune 500 companies who are seeking to recover money from their insurers to pay for lawsuits.

I spend a lot of time on the phone with my clients, discussing issues, strategizing the best ways to communicate, trying to get issues successfully resolved.

Going back to my managing partner hat, on any given day I also spend time talking to potential candidates to bring into our firm, maybe a lunch with a group of attorneys. If it’s a business lunch, there are two places: It’s either the Century Plaza Hotel or Craft.

I also really like to get all the attorneys or partners together on a monthly basis to talk about cases, issues and the growth of the business. I may be hosting a partner lunch. If that’s not happening I’m driving into Westwood to get sushi.

Afternoons are more phone calls, e-mails and meeting with different attorneys. I also travel a lot, to the East Coast and to Europe, so sometimes I’m catching an afternoon flight.

On any given evening I’ll go home to walk the dogs or attend a women’s network event. I’m meeting a lot with another woman who’s an executive to put together these articles on so-called “glass ceiling” issues. Or if I don’t have a dinner meeting set up, then I’ll go home and hopefully connect with friends.

On Monday nights, whenever “The Bachelor” is on, a group of my friends will drink wine and watch it together. It’s a terrible show, but for some reason, I’m hooked on it.

My days are pretty crazy. I’m lucky because I work with a lot of good friends here. It is definitely helpful to be in an environment where I can take breaks and chat with a few friends.

As told to Dominique Fong