Eviana (Englert) Woodlinn

Here’s why you’ll enjoy working with them.

Using their personal experience building a family and their experience handling complex litigation and dispute resolution matters, Evi helps clients successfully navigate the legal process of building a family and protecting their legacy.

Forming a family through assisted reproductive technology, second-parent adoption, or surrogacy involves many complex issues. To support their clients through this sometimes arduous and challenging process, Evi:

• Educates clients about their rights and responsibilities related to their individual reproductive journey, including the preparation of legal documents to successfully reflect that journey.
• Guides clients in making appropriate decisions about their family building options, and advises LGBTQ+ clients on their unique paths to parenthood.
• Represents intended parents and gamete donors in the area of egg donation, sperm donation, embryo donation, co-parent adoption and parentage proceedings.
• Utilizes expertise as a litigator to represent and advise clients in arising-from and related litigation.
• Crafts and implements estate plans safeguarding their family, including wills, power of attorney, advance health care directives and guardianship nominations.
• Works directly with colleagues who are experts in complex estate planning and legislative work to provide the full suite of services that their family planning clients require.

No matter the challenge that their clients face in beginning their journey as parents, Evi approaches this work with empathy, precision, and collaboration with all parties involved.

In their commercial litigation practice, Evi maintains a diverse practice, including environmental and mass tort litigation, intellectual property and patent litigation, multi-agency federal investigations, Title IX investigations, labor and employment litigation, food and beverage matters, and federal civil rights actions. Evi is well versed in all phases of discovery and trial preparation, including written discovery, motion practice, settlement negotiations, taking and defending depositions, direct and cross-examination of witnesses, opening and closing arguments, and pre-trial and post-trial briefing.

Prior to joining Bernstein Shur, Evi spent years as an Assistant Corporation Counsel representing the City of New York in federal court, defending the City and its employees in federal civil rights lawsuits.

But that’s not all. Evi is also very knowledgeable about:

• Lease and other real estate litigation, including commercial landlord-tenant disputes & evictions
• Protection from Abuse and Harassment
• Mass tort and environmental litigation
• Food and beverage litigation
• Intellectual property and patent litigation
• Federal agency investigations
• Federal civil rights litigation
• Title IX investigations

In her former life, Evi was:

• Law clerk for the Hon. Jeffrey L. Hjelm, Maine Supreme Judicial Court
• Assistant Corporation Counsel, Special Federal Litigation Division, for the New York City Law Department
• Judicial extern for the Hon. Geoffrey W. Crawford, United States District Court for the District of Vermont
• Legal intern in the Juvenile Rights Practice of the Legal Aid Society
• Director of Human Resources for Luke’s Lobster, a growing Maine-based restaurant company

When Evi isn’t working, she is…

Running, skiing, backpacking, or otherwise adventuring around Maine with their family.