Bruce Bellingham joined the firm as an associate in the firm's Commercial Litigation Department. Prior to joining the firm, he was with the law firm of Kaufman, Coren, Ress & Weidman. His career path was untraditional. After earning a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1984 from the University of Pennsylvania, he taught at Florida State University until 1998, returning to Penn for law school during leaves from FSU. "Law and academics are not that different," he says. "As an academic I did a lot of writing, marshaling of evidence and attempting to persuade."Initially, he planned to parlay his law degree into a different position in academia. But, when an employment discrimination case he and another student handled through Penn's Legal Services Office resulted in a judgment of more than $1 million, he was hooked: "I decided to practice law and be a litigator."Mr. Bellingham earned his B.A., with honors, from Trent University and an M.A. from York University. He holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was awarded the 1997 graduation prize in Civil Trial Advocacy and the M.E. Goldstein Memorial Prize in Labor Law. He is admitted to the bars of Florida and Pennsylvania and to the Supreme Courts of Pennsylvania and Florida, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Supreme Court of the United States of America.