Julie Selesnick

Biography

Julie S. Selesnick is Senior Counsel at Berger Montague and a member of the firm’s Employee Benefits & ERISA practice group, where she represents the interests of employees, retirees, plan sponsors, plan participants, and beneficiaries in employee benefit and ERISA cases in the district court and on appeal. Ms. Selesnick’s practice is focused on health care, where she brings more than a decade of insurance coverage experience to good use focusing on the behaviors of insurance carrier TPAs that exercise fiduciary duties under ERISA-covered health plans and counseling employers and other plan sponsors on provisions in their administrative service agreements that might cause them to unwittingly violate ERISA or other employee benefit laws. Ms. Selesnick is also focused on other legal violations related to patient health care under various federal statutes and state consumer statutes to help everyday Americans bring down the out-of-control health care costs they face.

Prior to joining Berger Montague, Ms. Selesnick was of counsel at another prominent plaintiffs’ class action firm, where she practiced primarily in the ERISA group representing plaintiffs in class cases related to 401K excessive fee disputes, actuarial equivalence pension issues, church plan litigation, and cases against third-party administrators for breach of fiduciary duty in connection with their administration of ERISA-covered group health plans. Ms. Selesnick also worked in that firm’s Consumer Protection group litigating consumer class action lawsuits and policyholder insurance coverage actions on behalf of individual and class plaintiffs.

Prior to that, Ms. Selesnick was a partner at a Washington D.C. law firm in both the insurance coverage and employment law groups, where she represented carriers in insurance coverage litigation and subrogation litigation in state and federal courts throughout the United States, and represented both employers and employees in employment litigation, as well as negotiating severance agreements and reviewing and updating employee handbooks. Ms. Selesnick has first-chair trial experience in jury and bench trials and has experience with arbitration and mediation of complex disputes.

Ms. Selesnick is an accomplished writer and has written numerous legal and non-legal articles and blog posts. She has also contributed to ERISA Litigation textbooks and cumulative supplements, and written materials for use in healthcare litigation conferences.

Ms. Selesnick graduated with a B.A., cum laude, from the San Diego State University and was elected Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Sigma Alpha, and she received her J.D., from the George Washington University School of Law, where she was a member of the George Washington University Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif.