The son of Ukrainian immigrants who fled Eastern Europe and later settled in Chicago during the Great Depression, Lowell Sachnoff spent his childhood listening to his Jewish relatives talk about how family and friends were tortured and killed in Russia. “My grandparents told us stories about how terrible life was in a lawless society,” Sachnoff says. “I think that’s why I wanted to become a lawyer.” Since graduating from Harvard Law School in 1957, Sachnoff has been on two parallel tracks.T
He’s been a successful securities and antitrust lawyer: In a celebrated 12-week price-fixing criminal trial in federal district court in Philadelphia in 1983, he obtained a not guilty verdict for Cerro Copper Corp. and several of its senior executives. And his defense of the board of directors of Marshall Fields & Co. against a shareholder lawsuit in the attempted takeover case in 1980 is famous for its successful application of the business judgment rule.
