Position: Partner

TEL: 212-965-9081

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Email: Click Here

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Admitted: New York

Law School: Columbia University School of Law, J.D., 2007 Editor-in-Chief, A Jailhouse Lawyer�s Manual Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar Valentin J.T. Wertheimer Prize (for labor and employment law)

College: Wesleyan University, B.A., with honors, 2001.

Birth Date and Place: 

Practice Areas: Civil Litigation, Plaintiff Civil Rights, 1983 Claims

Additional Information: See: Darryl Howard v. City of Durham, et al.

Emma Freudenberger has been actively involved in NSB�s trial practice since first joining the firm in 2008. Over the past several years she has obtained substantial verdicts and settlements on behalf of civil rights plaintiffs around the country.

For example, with Nick Brustin in 2014, Emma obtained the largest wrongful conviction jury verdict in U.S. history on behalf of Jeffrey Deskovic, who served more than 16 years in prison for the rape and murder of a high school classmate before DNA testing identified the true perpetrator. At trial, Emma handled the damages case, gave the liability closing and presented the plaintiff�s chief liability expert. In 2011, Emma was an active member of the trial team that won the first ever jury award in New Jersey for Section 1983 loss-of-life damages on behalf of the estate of Emil Mann, an unarmed Native American man shot and killed by New Jersey Parks Police. And in 2009, with Barry Scheck and cocounsel at Susman Godfrey LLP, Emma obtained a difficult-to-prove Monell verdict against the City of Houston for egregious systemic failures at its crime lab.

Emma has lectured about litigating civil wrongful conviction cases at various institutions including Columbia Law School, Yale Law School, and as a guest lecturer at Cardozo Law School. Since 2001 Emma has worked on behalf of individuals impacted by law enforcement, including helping acquit a man charged with murder as a legal intern with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, and working to implement sentencing and policing reforms at the Vera Institute of Justice and the Committee for the Administration of Justice in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Clerkship - Hon. Virginia A. Long, Supreme Court of New Jersey (death penalty clerk) 2007-2008.

Awards & Honors New York Super Lawyers �Rising Star� (multiple years) Mentor-in-Residence, Yale Law School (2013) New York State Bar Association 2007 Law Student Legal Ethics Award

Publications A Jailhouse Lawyer�s Manual, Editor-In-Chief (7th ed. 2007) Linking Mobilization to Institutional Power: The Faculty-Led Diversity Initiative at Columbia (with Susan P. Sturm, Jean E. Howard, and Eddie Jauregui) in Doing Diversity in Higher Education, Rutgers University Press, Mary Hartman, Cheryl Wall and Winnifred Brown-Glaude, eds. 2008.