Ted Frank - Background and Early Career

Background and Early Career

Frank was born in 1968. He is the nephew of Johanna Hurwitz and a cousin of the politics editor of The Atlantic Online, Garance Franke-Ruta.

He graduated from the Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, then earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Brandeis University in May 1991. He wrote columns for his campus newspaper and political magazines and was a member of the student senate. He objected to a campaign to stop serving pork at the Jewish university, which was noted in The New York Times.

In 1994 Frank earned his Juris Doctor with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School. At Chicago he earned Order of the Coif and served on the law review. While at Chicago Law, he was a known presence on Usenet groups and researched urban legends; he was an early contributor to the Baseball Prospectus collective through essays on the Usenet group rec.sport.baseball. He has also been described as one of the most notorious contributors along with snopes to an activity then known as "trolling for newbies" (the term "trolling" was not negative in connotation).

After clerking for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Frank entered private practice between 1995 and 2005 as a litigator on class action tort cases at law firms Kirkland & Ellis, Irell & Manella, and O’Melveny & Myers. Among his earliest cases were two sudden acceleration cases, where he represented the automakers. As part of his practice, Frank defended a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to delay the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, defended Vioxx liability cases, and served on defense teams for antitrust and patent cases.