Mark Katz, Arent Fox
DC has the best lawyers in the country (we're not biased at all). To highlight some of the city's best commercial real estate attorneys, we applied extensive use of statistics and the scientific method and bring you our latest installment of the legal minds that help DC's real estate industry thrive. (Check out Part 1 and Part 2.)
As chairman of the firm, Mark balances his real estate practice with managing 350 lawyers. (Each takes up 75% of his time, he smiles.) After attending Oberlin and UVa Law, Mark clerked for US District Court and the Fourth Circuit, then came to DC to "save the world." He started out as a white collar criminal defense lawyer, helping defend Richard Secord in the Iran-Contra hearings. In '87, he turned to real estate--having been exposed to it through his uncle, GC to NY-based Jack Resnick & Sons--and joined Arent Fox. Mark's handled projects like buying a 650-acre Costa Rican peninsula to develop into a luxury resort (repping Steve Case and Revolution), and acquiring a $1.5B EQR portfolio of 27 properties in six states (repping Greystar and longstanding client Goldman Sachs). He reps 1788 Holdings on The Lauren, the Bethesda condo development that includes DC's most expensive condo unit ($10.5M if you've got your checkbook out). Best lessons: Be generous with your time and collaborative with your network. View yourself as a corporation (with stakeholders, a board of directors, and business and marketing plans); continually invest in yourself. Here's Mark with his children and wife, NFL SVP Cynthia Hogan, on a Norwegian glacier.
