The firm opened its doors in June of 2017, only a few months before the Me Too movement began. As a public interest lawyer, Iliana saw firsthand how many young women and men were facing unspeakable trauma, discrimination, and retaliation at school or in college but didn’t know how to ask for help or how to find it, and few attorneys seemed willing to take on these cases.

Many of our clients are exceptionally talented students, professionals, and workers, who come from all walks of life, and are fighting, against all odds, for equal access to their education and to their jobs after surviving horrific violence, harassment, and retaliation. Konidaris Law PLLC provides something that is lacking and truly needed for our clients: a trauma-informed approach to aggressive, and strategic advocacy.

We are a New York City-based firm, but with trusted co-counsel, we work all over the country. Most recently, we have filed suits or counseled clients in Massachusetts, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

I work to get to know my clients personally and to understand their lives, their ambitions, and their personal interests, because I know that the trauma they have faced does not define them. My goal is to advocate for each of my clients and to empower them throughout the entire process, whether in a school administrative proceeding or in litigation. I measure the success of my cases not simply from large settlements or wins, but also from how my clients fare after their case is closed.

I learned the importance of a trauma-informed approach to lawyering as a Staff Attorney at the nation’s oldest legal gender-justice nonprofit, the Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund (Legal Momentum), where I worked closely with survivors of sex trafficking and was part of the litigation team fighting the online bulletin, Backpage.com, in the case Florida Abolitionist v. Backpage.com et al. I served as Special Counsel to Legal Momentum on the Backpage Matter and developed a close relationship with our incredible plaintiffs. 

Prior to my time at Legal Momentum, I was an associate at a boutique civil rights firm in New York City, Giskan Solotaroff & Anderson LLP, focusing on employment matters and consumer class actions, such as Cronas v. Willis, No. 06-CV-15295 (S.D.N.Y.) and McMillan v. Millennium Broadway Hotel, No. 09-CV-6053 (S.D.N.Y.) where we obtained a plaintiff’s verdict in a federal jury trial of $1.125 million, including a punitive damages award of $1 million, as reported by the New York Times here. I currently serve as Of Counsel to the firm. 

I went to law school to be a public interest lawyer, and throughout law school, I stayed committed to that goal and took advantage of every opportunity to learn how to represent real people with real problems. As a law student, I represented victims of domestic violence through clinical work; took on employment discrimination cases as a summer fellow at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago; interned abroad at the Forum for Women, Law and Development in Nepal to combat human trafficking; and co-taught an undergraduate course, Women and the Law.