Profits & Passions Jason Kessler A passion for the past and a soft spot for the little guy By KEITH LORIA

Profits & Passions
Jason Kessler
A passion for the past and a soft spot for the little guy
By KEITH LORIA

Sitting at his desk in his Scarsdale home, lawyer Jason Kessler is surrounded by a library full of history books showcasing wars, world leaders and ancient civilizations. Reading about historic people and places is a hobby for Kessler, although it almost became his career.

You see, growing up in Maryland, Kessler was right in the backyard of some of the most spectacular Civil War re-enactments in the country and his family made regular visits to these sites.

“Living in Antietam, every year we would see the re-enactment of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. We always went to the Battle of Bull Run and Gettysburg, and all of those,” he said. “There was a time in my life when I was very interested in the Civil War. The whole brother-vs.-brother thing was so interesting.”

Studying history at the University of Maryland, Kessler was thinking he was going to be a history professor some day. But upon graduating in 1998, he was unsure if that was the career path to take, so he headed to Israel to teach English to disadvantaged children. But he wasn’t giving up on history, while there, he also was able to take part in a number of archaeological digs, which also fueled his love for historic times.

“It was amazing and you can find so many interesting things,” he said. “There’s Roman archaeology, which you find all over the Middle East, and so many different civilizations. You sift through rock and debris and the natural growth to get to the civilization below. The tricky part is knowing what you are looking for and what you are looking at.”

During one dig, he happened upon a silver coin that proved to be quite valuable, and it now sits in an Israeli Museum.

“The most interesting thing I ever found was a coin from the period of Hadrian, who was an emperor of Rome (from A.D. 117 until A.D. 138). That was pretty cool,” he said. “It had a picture of the emperor and a Roman eagle and in Latin it was written ‘The Glory of Rome’.”

The memories are all he has to remember it by, because as any historian knows, you can’t keep the things you find in the archaeological digs.

As his teaching gig was coming to an end, Kessler decided to head back to the states to attend law school, having taken the LSAT’s years earlier and doing well. He studied at Touro Law Center on Long Island and then his law career took off.

He worked for the city of New York in its workers’ comp division for three years and then went to a private firm for a year, followed by two years as in-house council for Ace American Insurance. Earlier this year, he decided to make his job history and opened up his own practice in Westchester.

“I was representing the insurance company and that was not what I wanted to do,” Kessler said. “I wanted to be able to talk to people and help them directly. I wanted to do something positive and help people.”

Kessler uses his experience from those years to represent workers’ comp and personal injury claims, getting cases from per-diem work from local attorneys or the worker’s comp board. Having been on the other side, he knows all the tricks of the trade.

“Working in-house taught me a lot about what tactics insurance companies use to string out cases and not pay what people deserve in compensation so I know the process. I feel that was very valuable experience,” he said. “I like to help underprivileged people who need to exercise their rights. I turn down more cases than I take because I want clients who I believe are honestly hurt and honestly deserve a settlement.”

Between work, his wife, Vera, and their 9-month-old son, Jeremy, there’s not much time for Kessler to do any more than read about history these days, but he still considers himself an amateur historian and has even written some historic papers that he hopes to get published some day.

“There was a time in my life when history was the most important thing to me,” he said. “It will always be something that I am interested in and want to know more about.”

For now, he’s hoping to make his own history in the law profession.

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