About Eric John
Eric John Purchase earned his law degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1988 after completing a bachelor’s degree in political science at Gannon University in 1984. He entered the profession at a time when regional litigation practices were consolidating, and he soon took on roles that combined hands-on litigation with firm leadership.
His early career included a partner-level role and practice group leadership at MacDonald Illig Jones & Britton, LLP beginning in 1991. He later set out on a more independent path, opening his own practice under the name Eric J. Purchase, Lawyer at Law in 2006. In 2010 he moved into a partnership at Purchase & George, P.C., a firm that appears in his professional history and whose name has been associated with his later office listings.
Purchase is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania and is also admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Those federal admissions sit alongside a long record of local and state bar involvement. He is an active member of the Pennsylvania State Bar and has taken on roles that extend beyond routine membership.
Since 2010 he has served as a delegate to the Pennsylvania Bar Association House of Delegates. He has been part of the Pennsylvania Association for Justice since the early 1990s and joined that group’s Board of Governors in 2009. Locally, he has been affiliated with the Erie County Bar Association since 1991 and has chaired the Civil Litigation Section, after serving as co-chair in 2008 and 2009.
His involvement also includes the Western Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association Governor’s Club beginning in 2010 and an earlier stint on the Pennsylvania Bar Association Judicial Evaluation Commission’s Investigative Panel from 2007 to 2009. The sequence of roles suggests a lawyer who balances practice with professional governance and peer review functions.
Throughout his career Purchase has alternated between firm leadership and solo practice. He has taken on partner responsibilities, run his own office, and engaged in committee work that touches on judicial evaluation and trial practice. That mix has kept him in regular contact with trial calendars and civil litigation matters.
He maintains an office connected to Purchase, George & Murphey, P.C., and continues to practice in Pennsylvania while holding federal admissions. His current work centers on civil litigation and related trial matters in state and federal courts.
