Aisha Mahmoud

Senior Associate, Litigation

Builds the case file nobody else wants to build, and finds what's in it.

“Somewhere in the file is the sentence that wins. I'll find it.”

Email: [email protected]
Direct line: +1 (312) 555-0207
Office: Chicago
With the firm since: 2019

Aisha's story

Aisha was born in Dearborn, Michigan, to Lebanese parents who owned a bakery on Warren Avenue. She spent her childhood doing homework at a corner table while her mother argued with suppliers, which she says is where she learned that a good argument needs receipts.

She studied political science at Michigan and went to law school at Northwestern, where she ran the moot-court programme and won the national appellate competition in her final year. She clerked for a judge on the Seventh Circuit before joining Hale & Mercer in 2019.

The matter that made her reputation inside the firm was a 2023 insurance-coverage dispute in which 40,000 pages of discovery had been dismissed as irrelevant by the other side. Aisha read them. The two paragraphs she found turned a denied claim into a $4.2 million settlement for a family-owned manufacturer in Rockford.

Aisha lives in Andersonville with her cat Zayn and far too many books. She volunteers with the Arab American Family Services legal clinic twice a month and is the firm's reigning trivia champion, undefeated since 2021.

Off duty

When Aisha isn't at the office

Rock climbing

Climbs at First Ascent Avondale three nights a week and leads 5.11 outdoors at Devil's Lake. She says a hard route is the only thing that fully empties her head of a case.

Baking

Makes her mother's ka'ak and ma'amoul for every firm birthday and has been asked, more than once, to open a bakery. The answer is no, but the cookies keep coming.

Crossword construction

Has had two puzzles published in the Chicago Tribune and keeps a spreadsheet of theme ideas. Colleagues have learned not to mention unusual words in her presence.

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