Erik Berner joined the firm in March of 2025, upon returning home to Chicago. He is a licensed attorney admitted to the California bar, and is currently employed in a provisional capacity while his application to the Illinois bar is in process.

Erik spent a seven year period living in Los Angeles, CA, during which he obtained his J.D. from UCLA, and spent nearly six years (two as a law clerk, and four as a practicing attorney) working for a boutique family law practice in the West Hollywood district. During his time in Los Angeles, Erik managed cases involving celebrity and high-net-worth individuals, including negotiating Premarital Agreements, structuring property settlements (including those involving significant marital business and real estate interests), calculating and negotiating support awards, navigating the sensitive nature of child custody disputes, and both prosecuting and defending domestic violence restraining orders.

Erik has always found settlement to be the most rewarding part of legal practice, and is most proud of the cases in which he was able to assist a divorcing couple in ensuring that their dissolution would have the most minimal impact possible on their children. Erik is excited to be home, and to apply his skills to the negotiation and structuring of real estate transactions, and to ensuring that individuals’ and families’ end of life plans are set up and carried out in the way that most positively benefits them and their loved ones.

Erik’s grandparents immigrated to the United States from Mazeikiai, Lithuania to escape the authoritarian regimes which ravaged their homeland during World War 2. Erik grew up in the suburb of Lemont, attended Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox, and has been actively involved in the local Lithuanian-American community since he was a small child, including through his family’s folk dance group, Spindulys. Before practicing law, Erik attended Loyola University Chicago for his undergraduate studies, where he both worked in the graduate library and acted as a research assistant for the Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project, in which role he analyzed and digitized centuries-old legal texts from the University’s rare books collection. While at Loyola, Erik was President of Diminuendo and Cadence, the university’s literary and arts magazine, and helped lead a revival of the magazine which is still going strong today. While at UCLA, Erik was a research assistant to Professor Eileen Scallen, assisting in the updating of an annual Evidence guide and conducting research regarding evidentiary privileges.