As an attorney in Florida for almost 20 years, Jessica Ehrlich has represented clients in trial matters including business contracts, sales, lease and employment issues, land use and real estate, insurance issues, family and estate matters, and as a legislative and regulatory issue advisor to various corporate entities.
She concentrates her legal practice in commercial finance, real estate, equipment finance, commercial litigation, and creditor’s rights. She represents lenders in a variety of finance transactions, including all types of secured and unsecured loans, SBA transactions, lines of credit, acquisition financing, and working capital loans.
She also focuses her legal practice on asset-based lending, specialty lending, equipment finance, commercial lending, custom lending, real estate secured transactions, commercial card, SBA lending, SBA creditor’s rights, creditor’s rights, contested matters in bankruptcy, regulatory-related matters, workouts, and complex restructuring matters, including settlements, foreclosures, and note sales. She regularly represents financial institutions in permanent mortgage loan, construction loan and conduit loan transactions. Her financing experience also includes foreclosures, workouts, and restructuring of existing loans.
Jessica also brings over a decade of work experience at Fortune 500 companies and in federal and state government to her law practice and in advising clients. In New York, she worked in investment research at Goldman Sachs and as an attorney at Bloomberg LP, where her work was regularly published. In Washington, D.C., Jessica served two members of Congress as legislative counsel on both the House Financial Services Committee, and on the House Ways and Means Committee. She worked directly on the Dodd-Frank Bill, as well as on housing issues; CFIUS and fintech issues; programs for the unbanked and underbanked; the foreclosure crisis; insurance regulation, securities oversight and regulation; and consumer banking and credit unions. Most recently, Jessica was appointed by Mayor Muriel Bowser as the chief of staff for the District of Columbia Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking, and routinely counsels our banking clients on both federal and state regulatory and governmental matters.
Jessica’s work has been recognized by Glamour magazine naming her a Woman of the Year for Women in Politics in 2012, and by the Florida Association of Women Lawyers, naming her a Leader in the Law in 2013. In addition, Jessica appears regularly as a legal and financial analyst in national and international media on COURT TV, Scripps News, Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, Sky News, CNBC Europe, NewsNation, Newsmax and Florida This Week since 2014. Jessica has served as an appointee on the City of St. Petersburg Development Review Commission, as a division chair of the St. Petersburg Bar Association, as an active member of the Florida Association of Women Lawyers Pinellas Chapter, and a member of Inns of Court. She is a co-chair of the Vanderbilt University Alumni Association for her class, as well as for Shorecrest Preparatory School in St. Petersburg, FL.
Jessica has a BA from Vanderbilt University and a JD from Southern Methodist University, where she was a Dean’s Merit Scholar. While in law school, Jessica was a national moot court competition winner, on the Dean’s List, a Master Level of the Board of Advocates, led the Foreclosure Clinic, held a fellowship in international human rights law, and was a judicial intern for Chief Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich of the U.S. District Court, Middle Florida. Jessica is admitted to practice in all state, federal and bankruptcy courts in the state of Florida.
