van der Veen, Hartshorn & Levin

Focus and practice areas

Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the firm works across six practice areas. These are personal injury, criminal defense, family law, business litigation, civil rights, and estate planning. Running both civil and criminal work under one roof is less common than a single-focus practice, and it shapes how the office reads on the page.

The personal injury side is the most detailed on the site. It covers vehicle accidents involving cars, trucks, and motorcycles, along with other types of collisions. It also reaches medical malpractice, premises liability, workplace accidents, and wrongful death claims.

So the injury work runs from road crashes to hospital cases to job-site harm. That range suggests a firm set up to take a variety of accident and negligence files rather than one narrow slice.

Criminal defense and family matters

On the criminal side, the listed matters include assault, drug crimes, DUI, federal charges, sex crimes, theft, and white collar cases. That covers both street-level charges and the paper-heavy financial cases that tend to land in federal court.

The family law practice handles divorce, child custody, child support, and domestic violence. These are the everyday legal problems many households face, and they often overlap. A client can bring more than one of them to the same office.

Civil rights and estate planning

The civil rights work is a category many general firms leave off their list, and it sits naturally next to a practice that already does criminal defense. Estate planning falls at the other end of the spectrum, dealing with wills and the way assets pass on. Between them, the firm covers both a courtroom fight and the quiet paperwork done well ahead of any dispute.

How the team is built

The roster is organized into clear tiers. There is a founder, a group of partners, a set of associate attorneys, and two of counsel attorneys. That structure gives a client a sense of seniority before any call is made.

Michael T. van der Veen is the founder. The partner group carries the other two names in the firm's title, Brian Hartshorn and Nelson Levin. It also includes Timothy E. Possenti, Michael Troiani, and Patrick Dugan, a retired president judge who also served in the US Army.

The attorney group named on the site includes Bruce L. Castor Jr., Abigail Gustafson, Steven R. Bryson, Kaitlin McCaffrey, David C. Devine, and Adam Leasure. Counting the founder, that is roughly a dozen lawyers a client can look up by name.

Why a named roster helps

In my opinion, a public roster of this size does real work for a prospective client. They can see who might handle a file rather than a single contact who then hands it off. A former judge on the partner bench is also worth noting, since time on the bench shapes how a lawyer reads a courtroom.

What the site does not publish is a full bio for every attorney beyond the founder. Law schools, admission years, and case histories for the wider team are not laid out. A client who wants that detail would need to ask for it.

Where the attorneys are admitted

The firm states that its attorneys are licensed in state and federal courts in three states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois. For a Philadelphia office, the New Jersey reach is practical, because the state line sits just across the river.

The federal admissions matter too. They point to work that can move past state court into federal cases, which fits the white collar and federal charge lines on the criminal side. A firm licensed in three states can also follow a client whose matter crosses a border.

What the founder's record shows

Michael T. van der Veen handles both civil litigation and criminal defense. That is a wide split for one attorney, since the two areas follow different rules and different rhythms.

According to the firm, he has obtained multimillion-dollar jury verdicts in state and federal courts. The firm also says he has tried criminal cases in courts around the country. Those are the firm's own descriptions of his trial history.

As a reviewer, I read that dual trial focus as the core of the firm's identity. A founder who tries both civil and criminal cases tends to set the tone for how the rest of the team approaches a courtroom.

Who the firm appears built for

The mix of practice areas suggests an office set up for individuals and families as much as for businesses. Someone hurt in a crash, a person facing charges, or a couple going through a divorce could each find a matching practice here.

The business litigation and estate planning lines round out the offering for commercial disputes and personal planning. Taken together, the six areas cover a broad share of what walks through a city law office in a given week.

What the public pages leave open is the founding year and the deeper track record of the team beyond the founder. That leaves a few fair questions for a first conversation. Even so, the firm is clear about what it does, who sits on the team, and where those attorneys can appear in court, which is a solid base for anyone weighing their options.