Norman P. Stein

Philadelphia, PA

My first law job prefigured much of my professional career--I worked for the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds, which had hired 40 law students to go into coal country to conduct pension eligibility hearings. The year was 1976, and ERISA had just come on the scene. We were told that we were ERISA “fiduciaries.” Wow! I learned a lot that summer about the history of the coal mining industry and the UMWA, the enactment of ERISA, and the incredible importance of pensions to workers and their families. And I was surprised at how fascinating I found it all. From there it was law practice and teaching tax, labor, and benefits law, mostly at Alabama and now at Drexel. I have testified before seven different congressional committees, served on the Department of Labor's ERISA Advisory Council and GAO's Panel on Retirement Security, and currently am a policy adviser to the Pension Rights Center. I also co-chaired a working group of the Conversation on Coverage and have been active with Retirement USA, which is working toward creating a more sensible retirement policy for our nation's workers. Outside the world of benefits, I've done some death-row litigation. My heroes include Mike Gordon, Frank Cummings, Karen Ferguson, Ian Lanoff, Dan Halperin, Carol Gold, Bob Nagle, and Henry Rose.