Andrew Porter takes great pride representing an array of commercial real estate investors and developers, construction companies, condominium associations, private lenders, receivers, landlords, tenants, TIC owners, and real estate brokerage firms with litigation or transactional needs. For more than thirty years, he has prosecuted and defended securities and consumer fraud class and mass actions; real estate acquisition, development, leasing, and partnership disputes; and other complex legal claims in federal, state, and industry arbitration venues. Andrew has also represented buyers and sellers of both commercial and luxury residential real estate, and he recently served as counsel for the EquityBuild receivership estate, assisting with the marketing, sale, and conveyance of more than 120 properties. He possesses extensive knowledge of real estate law and the real estate industry.
After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, Andrew briefly attended medical school at the George Washington University School Of Medicine And Health Sciences before earning a Juris Doctor degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. He served as a federal judicial law clerk for the Honorable James C. Cacheris, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, which entailed a stint working at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Following his clerkship, he moved to New York City and practiced law at a national firm, but then, to placate his spouse, he moved to Chicago and worked at a boutique litigation firm and then (following its dissolution) another national law firm before accepting a position as General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer of Schatz Development, a luxury high-rise development company, where his responsibilities encompassed financial modeling, deal structuring, asset valuation, construction contract administration, and enterprise risk management.
Andrew has dealt extensively with Illinois common interest communities and condominium associations, has navigated federal, state, and local laws governing the administration, marketing, and sale of real property, and has devoted considerable time to both commercial leasing and mixed-use property management. He also established a residential real estate brokerage company and served as its managing broker. In addition, while working with domu, a start-up Chicago-based online apartment listing service, he authored a popular new standard-form Chicago apartment lease, numerous articles about the Chicago Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance (the CRLTO), and several guides on sound apartment leasing practices.
Before law school, he worked for Julien J. Studley Co., a national commercial real estate leasing firm (now known as Savills-Studley), and during law school he worked at the Federal National Mortgage Association, where he assisted with the development of the Delegated Underwriting and Servicing program. During college he worked as a lab assistant in the Pathology Department at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
In his spare time, Andrew likes to hone his skills as an amateur musician and, at this point, he can play virtually any classic rock ‘n’ roll song on bass guitar, note-for-note, without requiring any lead time to practice. He enjoys annoying his kids by shouting out the chords to songs that come on the radio. His wife Michelle Porter is a marketing assistant at Northwestern Mutual, his eldest daughter Julia Porter is the Director of Operations at domu (but works remotely from the East Village in New York City), his son Spencer Cole Porter churns out concert posters and album art for record companies, venues, and artists alike, and his youngest daughter Celia Porter (an aspiring Broadway star) attends performing arts school at the University of Southern California.