Before deciding to become an attorney, Richard E. Gorman, M.D., J.D., was a distinguished medical doctor, holding the position of chairman of the Department of Surgery of Chambersburg Hospital in Chambersburg, Pa., where he also headed the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee and was a member of the Medical Executive Committee.

Dr. Gorman worked with the Summit Surgical Group of Chambersburg for 20 years and was its lead physician from 2009 to 2016, with a specialty in general and bariatric surgery. For four years prior, he was a doctor with the Slocum-Dickson Medical Group in New Hartford, N.Y., and for one year before that he practiced with PhysicianCare in Towanda, Pa.

Most recently, in March 2022, he was co-counsel in litigation that resulted in a nearly $850,000 verdict by a Philadelphia jury in the case of a 42-year-old man who died at Aria Torresdale Hospital. The man had suffered a fall and arrived at the hospital with internal bleeding. Although admitted, he never had surgery and died nearly two days later, suffering a cardiac arrest. An autopsy showed his cause of death as a perforated ulcer.

Dr. Gorman attended Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, earning membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. He did his residency, in surgery, at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y. and, later, held a fellowship in bariatric surgery at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Dr. Gorman holds a fellowship with the American College of Surgeons and memberships with the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, the Pennsylvania Medical Society and the Franklin County Medical Society.

Before medical school, he attended Cornell University for two years before leaving school to travel the country while in his twenties, taking jobs as a migrant worker, planting pine trees in southern states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia and picking apples in Montana and Idaho in the "northern season.” He finished his undergraduate education at the University of Delaware with a degree in chemistry.

Dr. Gorman decided to give the law a try and, while still practicing medicine on a reduced schedule, enrolled at Penn State Dickinson School of Law after being awarded a scholarship to the school. At Dickinson he won a number of awards, including the CALI Excellence for the Future Award (twice) and the Irving K. Yaverbaum Accounting Prize. Dr. Gorman has been published, including an article on bariatric risk assessment and surgery for obesity and related diseases.

Among his many attributes, Dr. Gorman possesses rare stamina. He has competed in, and in some cases won, triathlons and has held his own in Iron Man competitions. He has run in a number of marathons, completing the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. in under three hours, 2:59 to be precise.