Faculty Profile: Phillip Cramer

Phil enjoys working with clients to solve problems and devise remedies. He specializes in plaintiff's recovery cases, particularly in the field of antitrust, where he assists corporate claimants obtaining recoveries, which have totaled nearly $1 billion. Phil also assists his clients in other commercial litigation, including insurance coverage, false claims, property rights, and complex business disputes. A particularly rewarding area of his practice is representing clients in high profile civil rights cases, having brought cases to vindicate immigrant rights, women's rights, voting rights, privacy rights, prisoner rights, death penalty relief, and marriage equality. For these efforts, he has received the Tennessee Bar Association's Harris Gilbert Pro Bono Attorney of the Year Award and the ACLU-TN Benjamin Pressnell Award. Phil is also an adjunct Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School.

Prior to joining Sherrard Roe Voigt & Harbison where he currently serves as a managing member, Phil worked as a trial attorney in the Honors Program of the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, which he has now parlayed into representing corporate clients seeking to recover losses as a result of antitrust violations. Read more about these current efforts in his blog, From Cost-Containment to Profit-Center.

After law school, Phil served as law clerk to the Honorable Karen LeCraft Henderson, United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Phil graduated with a 4.0 from Vanderbilt University Law School, where he served as senior articles editor for the Vanderbilt Law Review and was a John Wade Scholar and Order of the Coif. He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree from the University of Richmond, where he won a national debate championship and received the University's top award, the Mace Award while also being selected for the USA Today All-Academic Team.

A former Rhodes Scholar finalist, Mr. Cramer is the author of three books, including a recent book recounting journeys within both his church and the Supreme Court in the fight for marriage equality, The Fight for Marriage: Church Conflicts and Courtroom Contests. He is also the author of the books "Deep Environmental Politics" and "Rethinking Environmental Protection" - as well as "Constructing Alternative Avenues of Jurisdictional Protection: Bypassing Burnham's Roadblock Via 1404(a)" published in the Vanderbilt Law Review.

Phil is married to Anna Johnson Cramer and the proud father of three daughters. When not traveling with his family, spending time with his daughters, or woodworking, Phil is very active in his church, Belmont United Methodist Church, where he has served as Chair of the Board and of the Reconciling Committee, among other roles.