Robert A. "Bob" Clifford

Bob Clifford is the founder of Clifford Law Offices, which concentrates its practice in helping victims of personal injury, medical malpractice, wrongful death, mass torts and class actions, consumer and health care fraud, product liability, and aviation and transportation disasters. Bob regularly handles complex damage cases and routinely receives multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements. He was named one of America's Top 200 Lawyers in Forbes' inaugural list in 2024. Clifford Law Offices was named one of the Top 10 Litigation Boutiques in the country by The National Law Journal and awarded Bob the Elite Trial Lawyers' Award.

Mr. Clifford has the distinction of being selected by Super Lawyers®, a peer-review organization, as the number one lawyer in Illinois from 2009-2016 and in 2023-2024, and has always been in the top three. He was named by Chicago Magazine as one of the 100 Most Powerful Chicagoans and was named the 2012 Chicago Lawyer Person of the Year, based upon his trial accomplishments, and his contributions to the legal community and to the Chicago area. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals gave him its Professionalism Award in 2014. The Chicago Bar Association gave him the Justice John Paul Stevens Award in 2017, its highest honor. Also, that year he received the Unity Award from the Diversity Scholarship Foundation. The National Trial Lawyers named Bob Clifford the Class Action Trial Lawyer of 2018 and he has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America® from its inception, decades ago, including being the top in the Chicago metropolitan area in certain practice areas. He was recognized by Best Lawyers® as the 2019 Mass Torts Litigation / Class Actions “Lawyer of the Year” award winner in Chicago. That same year, the Illinois Trial Lawyers’ Association honored Mr. Clifford with the Leonard Ring Lifetime Achievement Award. He also was among those honored in 2019 by Public Justice’s Trial Lawyer of the Year Award.

Mr. Clifford has represented those injured or killed in every major commercial airline crash in the U.S. in the last three decades. Clifford was named Lead Counsel in the U.S. federal district court litigation involving the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302’s Boeing 737 Max8 jet on March 10, 2019, in Ethiopia. His aviation litigation representation includes the American Airlines crash at O’Hare in 1979; the United Airlines DC-10 crash in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989; the Comair runway crash in Lexington, Kentucky of 2006; the Continental Colgan crash of 2009; and, internationally, the Turkish Airlines crash in Amsterdam of 2009 as well as the tragic Boeing crash of a 737 MAX-8 in Ethiopia in 2019. Mr. Clifford served as the liaison counsel for the subrogation and business property damage claims that resulted from our nation’s tragedy on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center in New York. He served as lead counsel in the negotiation and settlement of those claims that settled for $1.2 billion. In a case involving a client who suffered permanent injuries after being dragged by a semi, the jury returned a record $35 million verdict for the young woman he represented.

One of Bob’s most notable cases is the $29.6 million verdict for Rachel Barton, an internationally acclaimed violinist who was severely injured by a Metra train. In 2014, Bob was the lead negotiator in the $1.2 billion settlement of numerous 9/11 property damage claims following the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York. In March 2015, Bob Clifford was lead counsel in a trial against Yellow Cab that resulted in a $25.9 million verdict on behalf of a lawyer who was injured in the back seat when the van crashed into a concrete barrier.

Bob was named by Best Lawyers/U.S. News & World Report as the Lawyer of the Year in Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions in 2016 and again in 2019 in the Chicago metropolitan area. He was appointed to serve as co-lead counsel in a case for which several attorneys recently secured a $250 million settlement against State Farm Insurance company. Bob also serves as co-lead counsel in a data breach case filed in state court against Advocate Medical Group, Illinois’ largest healthcare system, involving more than four million patients and reportedly the largest healthcare data breach in the nation’s history. In addition, Bob was appointed as co-lead counsel in a class action filed against Pella Windows Corporation, a nationwide window manufacturer. U.S. District Court Judge James B. Zagel of the Northern District of Illinois appointed Clifford “as class counsel for his demonstrated skills in the field”. Most recently, Bob and other attorneys have joined to represent numerous hospitals across the country in their fight against the manufacturers of opioid drugs. Clifford Law Offices also represents numerous women in their allegations against Johnson & Johnson stemming from use of the company’s talcum powder products. Just recently, the National Trial Lawyers named Bob Clifford as the Class Action Trial Lawyer of 2018.

In addition to practicing law, Mr. Clifford is dedicated to the furtherance of the legal profession and has been actively involved in and held leadership roles with the American Bar Association (Chair of the Section of Litigation and Chair of the ABA’s charitable arm, the Fund for Justice and Education), Chicago Bar Association (President), Chicago Inn of Court (President), American College of Trial Lawyers and Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (President). He is also a member of the American Law Institute, the Inner Circle of Advocates and serves on the Board of Directors for the RAND Institute for Civil Justice. For more than 25 years, he has sponsored the Annual Clifford Tort Symposium on Tort Law and Civil Justice at DePaul University College of Law. Mr. Clifford also served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Naples Children & Education Foundation, a charitable organization and host of the Naples Winter Wine Festival, which benefits over 200,000 at-risk and underprivileged children in Southwest Florida.