In May, Walkup was honored to sponsor the first-ever national meeting of the country’s emerging Plaintiff’s Law Associations, or PLAs, representing students at nationally recognized law schools who are interested in plaintiffs’-side work. PLAs at various law schools have begun hosting events, featuring distinguished plaintiffs’ attorneys to share insights about their practice and the societal benefits achieved by ethical and talented trial lawyers, but had never met one another in a national summit. Walkup felt that bringing students together from across the country for a weekend would be beneficial, providing a forum to share their individual agendas, goals and experiences.
The event was a great success with social events on Friday and Saturday evenings and Walkup partners Khaldoun Baghdadi, Valerie Rose, Conor Kelly, and Spencer Pahlke leading workshops on the topics of mass tort practice, sexual abuse cases, trial practice, and business development throughout the weekend. A primary focus of the group is to create a nationwide plaintiffs’-side interview day, bringing together students who want to practice on the plaintiffs’ side with dozens of plaintiff’s firms, in hopes of providing an alternative to “Biglaw’s” on-campus interview program.
Participating law school PLAs included Berkeley Law, UC Law SF, Stanford Law, Michigan Law, University of Texas School of Law, Harvard Law, Penn Law and The University of Chicago School of Law. We were pleased and honored to bring these future stars of plaintiff’s practice together. With four of our partners serving as adjunct faculty at Northern California law schools, we deeply value our connections to law students across the country, and look forward to our future work with bright young advocates.
