Joseph I. Lieberman, the former senator from Connecticut, has joined the law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman.
The onetime vice presidential candidate will start his new job on Thursday, serving as senior counsel at the firm. He will be based in New York. Mr. Lieberman, 71, retired from the senate in January after representing Connecticut in Washington for nearly a quarter-century.
Before being elected to the senate in 1988, Mr. Lieberman served as the attorney general in Connecticut for six years. Before that, he was a state senator in Connecticut for a decade. Born in Stamford, Connecticut, Mr. Lieberman, 71, is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.
In a statement, Mr. Lieberman said he was “excited to return to my roots as a lawyer and counselor with the opportunity to use the independent investigative skills I learned as Attorney General and during many Senate investigations.â€
Mr. Lieberman is the latest in a long line of retired politicians that take senior counsel roles at big law firms. In March, Scott Brown, who lost the Senate race in Massachusetts to Elizabeth Warren last year, joined Nixon Peabody in Boston. And two other recently retired senators, Jon Kyl from Arizona and Kay Bailey Hutchinson from Texas, joined Covington & Burling and Bracewell & Giuliani, respectively.
In Kasowitz Benson, Mr. Lieberman joins a litigation powerhouse that has in recent years has entered the ranks of the country’s most profitable law firms. Started two decades ago as a spinoff of Mayer Brown, the firm has recently become known for taking on the large banks, representing plaintiffs in financial-crisis and mortgage-backed securities related litigation.
The firm’s managing partner, Marc Kasowitz, is a Connecticut native and goes way back with Mr. Lieberman. He first met Mr. Lieberman when working on his state senate campaign in 1970, and for a time they belonged to the same synagogue in New Haven. Mr. Kasowitz has also long provided financial support to Mr. Lieberman’s senate campaigns.
