Rising Star: Blank Rome’s Kyle P. Brinkman
Blank Rome Partner Kyle P. Brinkman has been named a 2021 Rising Star by Law360 in recognition of his legal accomplishments in the category of Insurance. Below is an excerpt of his profile, as published by Law360. A full copy is available here.
Kyle P. Brinkman of Blank Rome LLP has taken a prominent role in several policyholder-side real estate disputes, including representing publicly traded real estate investment fund Urban Edge Properties in a $40 million COVID-19 business interruption suit, earning him a spot among the top insurance litigators under 40 honored as Law360 Rising Stars.
Why he’s an insurance attorney:
Becoming an insurance attorney was never on Brinkman’s radar.
In law school, he flirted with environmental law, reflecting a do-gooder mindset, he said. Generally speaking, he wasn’t sure about a focus, but it certainly wasn’t insurance.
Chalk it up to luck then: Dickstein Shapiro hired Brinkman as a summer associate out of law school, adding him to its insurance practice, which was in need of more manpower.
Many lawyers at the firm, which ceased operations in 2016, soon joined Blank Rome.
“If I talked to my high school or college or maybe even law school self, they would say, ‘Wait, you turned into an insurance lawyer?’ It doesn’t sound that interesting. It actually probably sounds pretty boring. But it’s not. It’s actually quite interesting,? he said.
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His proudest moment as an attorney:
Brinkman’s pro bono work stands out among his accomplishments.
He provides insurance coverage advice to the Latin American Montessori Bilingual Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., and volunteers for law projects at the Duke Ellington School for the Arts, also in D.C, according to Blank Rome.
He said he also used to run advance directive workshops while at Dickstein Shapiro, working with legal counsel for the elderly. Blank Rome is in the process of reopening those clinics as the pandemic begins to wind down.
“Even when you don’t get the result your pro bono client wants, they think you have done the best work that anyone could do for them,” Brinkman said. “You get the real sense that you’ve had some real impact on their lives.”
But he also noted that he’s most proud of some of the more forgettable moments as an attorney. For instance, he enjoys getting a first look at a policy and figuring out a unique argument for a case that the client eventually adopts, becoming the theory for the case years down the line.
To read Kyle’s full profile, please click here.
“Rising Star: Blank Rome’s Kyle P. Brinkman,” by Eli Flesch, was published in Law360 on June 15, 2021.