Legends of Labor
Hall of Fame
Legends of Labor
Hall of Fame
Bio details
Samuel H. Pond
Managing Partner,
Pond Lehocky Giordano
The first ever Legends of Labor “Friends of Labor ” inductee on June 6th, 2023, Sam Pond, Managing partner at Pond Lehocky Giordano has been a champion of the Philadelphia area union community and working men and women. (REMOVE – since his father worked as a member of the Gas Workers Union Local 686 and well as from his own days working as a laborer for laborers local 332 long before he founded America’s premier work injury firm, Pond Lehocky and Giordano.)
The first ever Legends of Labor “Friends of Labor ” inductee on June 6th, 2023, Sam Pond, Managing partner at Pond Lehocky Giordano has forever been a champion of the Philadelphia area union community and all working men and women.
A believer in workers rights and fair wages, Sam has long been a voice for union workers in the fight to maintain their collective bargaining rights as well as educating them on the importance of voting in elections for policy makers who support their union standards.
Sam Pond regularly speaks at union halls to educate active and retired union members on their rights as both injured workers and retirees. He has also supported countless union causes over the years benefitting sick and injured union workers and families and has been an integral part of supporting, maintaining and participating in labor radio since its inception thus guaranteeing the voice of labor and the cause of labor advocacy stays alive on behalf of all working families.
In the early days of Philadelphia’s union labor radio initiative, upon learning that the the voice of labor was in jeopardy of going off the air, legendary long time Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO President Pat Eiding, uttered just three words “Call Sam Pond” that changed the trajectory of the endeavor and the voice of labor hasn’t skipped a beat since!
Thus It should surprise no one that Sam Pond is a staunch advocate for injured and disabled people and a champion for the vulnerable, especially hard-working union members injured while working jobs that put food on the table for their families.
His father was a union machinist for the Philadelphia Gas Works. Sam himself was a union laborer in his late teenage years, working 90-hour weeks laying a pipeline throughout Pennsylvania during his junior year of high school.
This experience, as well as Sam’s upbringing and other work experiences before entering the law—including working tough, on-your-feet-all-day jobs at Philadelphia institutions like The Philadelphia Inquirer (working for a local mailer’s union) for 9 years, Christian Schmidt Brewing Co. (known affectionately as “Schmidt’s”) for 2 years, and Tastykake—put him on a path leading to him becoming a founding partner and the managing partner of one of the largest workers’ compensation and disability law firms in the country.
Life lessons learned early
Sam grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia. Sam’s intellectual and inspirational parents instilled in him the American Dream, and the belief that an intellectually curious person of principles and ambition would never encounter an unachievable goal.
Sam was an all-state soccer player in his youth. His time on the soccer field, along with guidance from his parents and his work experiences, provided important lessons about people and life that he leans on every day as the managing partner of Pond Lehocky Giordano. He has also boxed in many of Philadelphia’s boxing gyms. He had his last fight in 2009 in a charity bout during the The Golden Gloves championships at the iconic Blue Horizon.
For example, Sam learned about the strength of a team and how a group of people united by the desire to accomplish something was unstoppable. He learned about the importance of team members having each other’s backs, and the importance of shared sacrifices and sacrificing for your fellow team members. He also learned that honesty, respect, and manners can get you far in life, yet they always seem to be in short supply.
Unsurprisingly, these lessons have been reinforced by Sam’s marriage to Mimi, who grew up four blocks from him and was his first-grade classmate. They started dating in high school, and have been married for 40 years.
Sam also saw early in life how workers suffer when they don’t report injuries they sustained on the job, and how employers try to outmaneuver their loyal employees every step of the way.
His mother worked in North Philadelphia at a sweatshop where she suffered a work injury, but the employer did not have insurance.
Sam’s father was severely burned by steam while working at the Philadelphia Gas Works. He never left his union, but the Philadelphia Gas Works was so behind on paying his medical bills that it sent him to Drexel University for an engineering degree. Nevertheless, Sam’s dad died a union member.
On his deathbed, Sam’s dad designated his union pension to Sam since Sam’s mom had predeceased him. Despite 35 years of excellent service, the Philadelphia Gas Works commissioner denied Sam’s dad’s pension. Sam took on his father’s legal case—it was the first case Sam ever worked on—during his first year of law school. Sam won the case and established legal precedent that, to this day, still stands.
The path to Pond Lehocky Giordano
From 1976 through 1985, Sam worked almost every Friday and Saturday night, and sometimes on weeknights, at the Philadelphia Inquirer on the presses. This union job allowed him to pay his undergraduate tuition at Drexel University, from which he graduated in 1981 with a finance degree.
In his senior year at Drexel, Sam had the realization that the rule of law made everything go. Never shying away from being where the action is, Sam used the money he earned from his job at the Philadelphia Inquirer to put himself through law school, graduating from what is now the Temple University Beasley School of Law in 1984. He has served as an adjunct professor at Temple Law and is one of a small number of law school graduates to have been inducted into Temple University’s Gallery of Success.
Like his future Pond Lehocky Giordano co-founding partners Jerry Lehocky and Tom Giordano, it only took Sam a few months to realize he can better serve society by being an attorney who brings workers’ compensation cases on behalf of injured workers, instead of being an attorney who defends them on behalf of corporations.
In 1988, Sam joined a small workers’ compensation firm with less than seven people—and quickly found his calling. He embraced being a champion for the vulnerable members of society, particularly union members, who aren’t in a position to fight large corporations and government bureaucracies. Sam believes that unions are, to this day, the last bastion of the middle class.
(That’s one of the reasons why he later founded Union Services Access (USA), a network of experts in job site safety, continuing education, politics, and law whose lawyers provide a one-stop solution for union members’ legal needs.)
After seven months, he became a named partner in the firm. That was 1988.
Over the course of 22 years at that law firm, Sam developed his lawyering, client service, and leadership skills. Sam had not only risen to become a partner at that firm, but had also become a heavy hitter in the Pennsylvania and national legal communities.
Three years after Sam joined the firm, Jerry Lehocky did as well. Sam and Jerry were friends at law school, and Jerry replaced Sam at the job Sam left to work at the workers’ compensation firm.
During their time together, Jerry and Sam grew inseparable, challenging each other to be the best lawyers, businesspeople, husbands, and fathers they could be.
After almost 20 years of working together at that leading workers’ compensation firm, Sam and Jerry began to think there was a better way.
A better way to fight employers and insurers who refused to abide by the law and pay their injured workers the benefits they were entitled to.
A better way to build a law firm that could help clients who suffered injuries of all kinds find the legal and medical help they needed.
Soon after they began exploring this idea, they made it a reality. Sam and Jerry, along with Tom Giordano who joined their firm in the mid-2000s, put their reputations and resources on the line, and armed with a belief in themselves, each other, and that they were doing the right thing, turned the lights on at Pond Lehocky Giordano on July 1, 2010.
(By the time Sam, Jerry, and Tom left their old firm, they had helped grow it to more than 100 attorneys and staff.)