Alan Sobol isn’t so much a Fresh Face as he is a new face at Pullman & Comley. Sobol has embarked on a career change at a time when most attorneys are looking at retirement. Sobol, 60, has joined the firm’s Litigation Department and White Collar Defense and Corporate Investigations practice as a partner in the firm’s Hartford office.
Facing changes and challenges is nothing new to Sobol. While a Justice Department attorney, he took on some notorious cases including the prosecution of those involved in the Jonestown Guyana Massacre in 1978 and the Mariel boatlift from Cuba in 1980. “I was on the docks in Key West when Castro emptied the hospitals and mental institutions and sent everybody to the U.S.,” said Sobol.
A career of traveling across the U.S. working on major cases took its toll on Sobol who decided it was time to leave for private practice at Amtrak. The next case on his Justice Department docket would have been the prosecution of Los Macheteros, a case that ironically would have brought him to Hartford. “I decided it was time to take a break and be home based,” said Sobol.
He comes to Pullman from O’Connell, Flaherty & Atmore where he practiced for 14 years after 10 years at Tyler, Cooper & Alcorn. Sobol made the jump because “my thinking was a firm like Pullman offers more opportunities, a platform to continue to grow and develop my practice.”
Sobol said another appealing factor was the opportunity to work with Alex Hernandez, practice chair and partner based in Bridgeport, who joined the firm in 2007 after a 16-year-career at the U.S. Department of Justice, most recently serving as supervisory assistant U.S. attorney for the Fairfield County office of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut. “I thought it was attractive to work with somebody with Alex’s credentials and try to grow and expand the firm’s practice,” he said.
When not defending clients, Sobol is an avid golfer as well as a veteran member of the Cheshire Board of Education. He is the midst of his third four-year term. “I’ve always felt that education is important,” Sobol said, adding he believes in the old adage, “To stay young, you should be around young people.”
