Divorce attorney extinguishes different types of fires than planned

John M. D’Arco, ’91 LAS, a partner at Beermann Pritikin Mirabelli Swerdlove LLP, passed the Chicago firefighters test while a student at John Marshall Law School and was accepted into the Chicago Police and Firefighting Training Academy.

But his then-girlfriend Sandra (now his wife and co-worker) talked him out of it. “I’d rather see him put out fires in the courtroom, than in a burning building. Plus he’s genuinely great at what he does and it would be a shame to share that talent with a competing, equally grueling career.”

“I was fairly serious about it,” says D’Arco, a Lincoln Park resident who graduated from St. Ignatius College Prep. “but, as a divorce and family law lawyer, you definitely still put out a lot of fires.”

Consistently ranked among Illinois’ top attorneys, D’Arco has been listed among the Best Lawyers in America every year since 2015. He has represented celebrity and high-profile cases of the “who’s who” in Illinois, but prefers let his hard work do the talking.