New York (November 10, 2015) — Three attorneys from boutique litigation firm Susman Godfrey have been named to Benchmark Litigation’s list of the “Top 100 Trial Lawyers in America.” New York partners Stephen D. Susman, Bill Carmody and Jacob W. Buchdahl were each recognized.
According to Benchmark Litigation, trial work has become increasingly rare and “the pool of lawyers equipped to attend to this work has been steadily shrinking. The opportunities for lawyers to gain experience and become seasoned by actual courtroom work have been decimated by the rise of alternative dispute resolution and out-of-court settlements. As a result, the divide between ‘litigators’ and ‘trial lawyers’ has widened considerably, with the latter group commanding ever increasing levels of reverence as masters of a seemingly endangered craft.”
“We’ve focused our firm for over three decades on just one thing, and one thing alone—high-stakes litigation,” said founding partner Stephen Susman. “So it’s not surprising that we regularly have attorneys named to lists like this.”
In May, Susman donated $2 million to establish and fund The Civil Jury Project at NYU Law School, a collaborative effort between law students, lawyers, judges and political bodies across the nation. The project is intended to examine the factors leading to a decline in civil jury trials and educate the legal community and public on methods to revitalize the dying system.
Benchmark Litigation is the only publication that focuses exclusively on U.S. litigation. The publication’s rankings and editorials stem from the culmination of a six-month research period during which researchers conduct extensive interviews with litigators and their clients to identify leading litigators and firms. During these interviews, researchers examine recent casework handled by law firms and ask individual litigators to offer their professional opinions on peers.
