Robert A. Clifford

Robert A. Clifford is the founder of Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, an internationally-recognized trial firm that concentrates in aviation, transportation, personal injury, medical negligence, product liability law, mass torts and class actions. The National Law Journal named Clifford Law Offices one of the Top 10 Litigation Boutiques in the country for 2012 and awarded Mr. Clifford the Elite Trial Lawyers Award in 2014. 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 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, 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. Also that year he received the Unity Award by the Diversity Scholarship Foundation. The National Trial Lawyers named Bob Clifford the Class Action Trial Lawyer of 2018 and he has been listed in Best Lawyers from its inception, decades ago.
In 2019, the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association honored Mr. Clifford with the Leonard Ring Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also among those honored last year by Public Justices prestigious 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. This includes the American Airlines crash at OHare 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. He is currently lead counsel on behalf of families of the victims onboard 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 nations 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. Mr. Cliffords most recent trial involved a client who suffered permanent injuries after being dragged by a semi. The jury returned a record $35 million verdict for the young woman.
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 ABAs 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.