REPRESENTING PLAINTIFFS


Nina Schuyler I 34 FALL 2011


t’s often highly emotional. Heart-wrenching at times. With lives at stake, it can be a race against a ticking clock—depositions and interrogatories needing to be done before the client’s health dete- riorates. Despite the high emotion of these cases, attorneys who represent plaintiffs can’t imagine


doing anything else.


“When a client thanks you, not just for handling her case but for coming to understand who she is, what she’s suffered, and how her life has changed, I find that very satisfying,” says Amy Eskin, a partner at Hersh & Hersh.


That sentiment runs through the six Bay Area plaintiffs’ attorneys profiled here, all of whom began prac- ticing this kind of law straight out of law school and haven’t looked back. Added together, they’ve been practicing more than a hundred years, winning scores of trials with million dollar judgments.


These lawyers are on the front lines, the ones whom the public knows best. They represent people in em- ployment matters or when a catastrophic injury strikes from negligence, a defective product or pharmaceu- tical, or from asbestos exposure.


“My personality is to be a plaintiff ’s lawyer,” says Daniel Feinberg, a partner at Lewis, Feinberg, Lee, Renaker & Jackson in Oakland. “I can’t imagine not doing this. It’s like asking a dog why it chases squirrels.”


To succeed in this area of law, says Gilbert Purcell of Brayton Purcell, means to immerse yourself com- pletely in each case. “There are always things to be done, and you’re never done,” says Purcell. But, he’s quick to add, “When you have a chance to make a difference in someone’s outcome, it’s all you could hope for in your career.


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