DA VID MITCHELL Cool in the courtroom
Mitchell draws on skating career experience as attorney by LOIS ELFMAN
Being a litigator requires calm under pressure,
focus, preparation and maybe a bit of ice in the veins. Attorney David Mitchell of the law firm Steinger, Iscoe & Greene, which represents injured parties in personal injury litigation, has got all those bases covered, and skating certainly plays a role.
“It went a long way in preparing me for the
courtroom for a number of different reasons,” said Mitchell, U.S. novice and junior ice dance champi- on and two-time senior medalist with Loren Galler Rabinowitz. “First, discipline to actually prepare before you get into court. As competitors, you work and try to hone and perfect your skills. It’s a huge benefit to have that background in order to work and really fine-tune and perfect the argu- ments before going in, whether it be for a hearing or for trial, so I can best advocate for my clients. “In terms of being comfortable in front of a
group of people, there’s nothing that I’ve ever ex- perienced that is more uncomfortable and intimi- dating than myself and Loren in the middle of the ice in front of 15,000 people,” he added. “Standing in front of seven jurors and a judge is still intim- idating, but it’s less intimidating than that. It has been invaluable in terms of making me comfort- able standing up in front of people. It’s not that it’s a performance in the practice of law, but there is some showmanship and a presentation aspect of it. Skating definitely helped me in that respect.” If anyone ever questions Mitchell’s ability to multitask, he can simply point out that he attended college full time during the height of his competi- tive ice dance career, graduating from Tufts Univer-
Left, David Mitchell and wife, Laura, cherish time spent at their Florida home with their two young daughters. Below, David Mitchell with daughters Charlotte and Emmalyne.
sity in Boston in 2004. In retrospect, he has no idea how he pulled it off, but he’s thankful that he did. Although there were sacrifices both off and on the ice, it helped him make a smooth transition to life after skating. It was crucial to have a like-minded partner.
Galler Rabinowitz attended an extremely challenging high school and knew her long-term plans included attending medical school and becoming a physician. With med school done and Galler Rabinowitz, 29, now doing her residency, she and Mitchell, 33, may just be the only championship U.S. ice dance team to both go on to professional careers. “We both kind of struggled to keep every- thing up at the same time, but we felt a strong con- viction that it was important to maintain academ- ics as a priority,” Mitchell said. “It has helped me professionally in being able to keep a lot of things in the air at the same time and avoid getting over- whelmed. It also helped me in terms of the ability to jump from topic, issue or case to topic, issue or case and not lose track of where I was when I left that piece of work.” It also enables Mitchell, who lives in Port St.
Lucie, Florida, to balance the demands of his legal career with a vibrant family life with wife Laura and daughters Charlotte, 3, and Emmalyne, 1. “I love fatherhood. My daughters are amazing
— in my own totally unbiased opinion,” Mitchell said. “Charlotte is kind, energetic and always ex- cited about everything — interested and curious. Emmalyne is getting into everything now; she’s curious and wants to follow everybody around wherever they go. She’s not far from learning how to walk. It’s amazing to watch them grow and see how they change within such a short time frame. It’s affected my life.” Someday, he may take his daughters skating,
although it’s been a while since he’s been on the ice. Tere isn’t a rink nearby, and Mitchell is more inclined toward warm-weather activities. After growing up in upstate New York and then spending nearly a decade in New England (he and Galler Rabinowitz trained in Boston and then in Connecticut), Mitchell is partial to the outdoor life of Florida, where he moved in 2006 to attend law school. While he misses the topography of New England, especially the diverse range of trees and foliage, he doesn’t miss the snow. “We do things outdoors all year round,”
Mitchell said. “I enjoy boating. I enjoy going to the beach. It’s nice to have the sun always shining.” He is proud that he and his former skating
partner followed through on their academic aspira- tions and are now living what he calls “our second careers,” the first being skating at a high level. Tey managed to train with dedication, while never los- ing sight of their life goals. Mitchell has great memories of skating, but the first that comes to mind speaks to who he is as a person — someone who values hard work and
Loren Galler Rabinowitz and David Mitchell perform their original dance at the 2006 U.S. Championships in St. Louis.
embraces it joyfully. “My fondest memories of skating are the
5 o’clock or 5:30 beginnings of our training ses- sions,” he said. “Being out there on the ice with Loren with the fog kind of drifting as we would be working around and skating. Working togeth- er with her to get better and better every day and pushing each other to do things we didn’t think we could do and to accomplish things that we weren’t sure we could accomplish.” Notable competitions for him include their
first U.S. title, novice in 2000, and their junior ti- tle in 2002, which came after an emotional year in which Mitchell’s grandfather died. Te latter earned them their first of two trips to the World Junior Championships. In the senior ranks, they secured the bronze medal in 2004. “Skating gave me an amount of self-confi- dence and also a great degree of comfort and lack of fear in terms of going out and trying new things,” Mitchell said. “Particularly professionally, I’m com- fortable kind of stepping out of the box and trying to create new arguments and look at things from a different perspective, because it’s what we were constantly having to do [in ice dance]. If we did what somebody did the year before, we would be left behind. It was always having to reinvent and try to create something original and new. “In my life, that is something that has stayed with me and has driven me to try to always be pushing the envelope,” he added. Just as he appreciated his coaches in skating,
Mitchell is grateful for strong mentors in his legal career.
Other than Galler Rabinowitz, who remains a close friend, he keeps in touch with most skating friends via Facebook. A busy personal and profes- sional life doesn’t leave much time to watch skat- ing, but he certainly saw Meryl Davis and Charlie White win Olympic gold, a seemingly unattainable goal for U.S. ice dancers when Mitchell was grow- ing up. He remembers seeing Davis and White as young kids and thinking they had great potential. “Te sport today is amazing,” Mitchell said.
“I don’t think that I would be anywhere close to competitive in today’s environment. Te sport has jumped ahead by leaps and bounds. “I’m definitely very proud of all of them and
what they’ve accomplished,” he added. “It’s excit- ing to watch.”
SKATING 9
ELSE/GETTY IMAGES
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVID MITCHELL
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77