Associate

Markita Morris-Louis is an associate in the firm's Real Estate Practice Group and is part of the firm’s Environmental Sustainability Practice Team. She joined Drinker Biddle after completing a Philadelphia Public Interest Fellowship at Regional Housing Legal Services in Glenside, Pa., where she represented nonprofits in the development of affordable housing. Her practice is focused on real estate, particularly, retail leasing, zoning and land use matters in the City of Philadelphia, development and finance.

As part of her retail leasing practice Markita has negotiated leases on the tenant side for emerging brands opening and occupying stores in markets as diverse as Brooklyn, NY, Santa Monica, CA, Chicago, IL and Grand Rapids, MI. Markita also represents public and private clients in zoning hearings and appeals, land subdivision, and development matters. She also has experience representing lenders in complex, multistate refinancing transactions and counseling clients on realty transfer tax issues.

In General. Markita is a member of the firm’s Diversity and Summer Associate Committees. She has lectured on zoning and land use issues at the Wharton School’s Real Estate Center and has contributed research and editing to the Pennsylvania Bar Institute’s seminar on Winning Zoning Cases in Philadelphia. She is also the Young Lawyers Division of the Philadelphia Bar’s liaison to the LawWorks Steering Committee. Markita was selected as a 2009 Fellow of the British-American Project, a transatlantic leadership organization co-founded in 1985 by Drinker Biddle's esteemed late chairman, Lewis Van Dusen, Esquire.