Product Liability Senior Associate

Distinct | North America; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 235,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Performance bonus

Job summary

Distinct | North America in Los Angeles is seeking a Product Liability Senior Associate for a hybrid role. You will handle state and federal cases on a single product line, leveraging deep domain knowledge as matters unfold in court.

You will depose and prepare the company’s most knowledgeable expert on design history and warnings, working with specialists in biomechanics, accident reconstruction, and medical rehab.

Qualifications

• Five to seven years of litigation experience, ideally in product liability or mass tort.
• Must be admitted to the California Bar.
• Resume, law school transcript and a writing sample must be provided up front.

Responsibilities

• Act for makers, distributors, retailers, and contractors in state and federal court.
• Depose and prepare the company's person most knowledgeable on design history and warnings.
• Utilize expertise from biomechanics, accident reconstruction, treating medicine, and vocational rehab.
• File motions aimed at excluding experts from testimony.
• Co-counsel with partners outside California since the group is national.

Skills

Product liability

Litigation

Deposition

Mass tort

Education

Juris Doctor (JD)

California Bar

Job description

Product Liability Senior Associate | Hybrid, Los Angeles | $235,000 to $280,000

Every product liability lawyer has spent a month learning an expert's whole back catalog and then watched the case settle the following week.

On this team that month keeps paying you back. The docket is built around one product line, so the design history barely changes and you see a lot of the same experts from file to file, and what you worked out about a reconstructionist in the spring is still useful in the fall when a different plaintiff turns up with the same theory. A few years of that and you end up knowing the science better than some of the people being paid to explain it to a jury.

What fills the calendar:

• Acting for the makers, distributors, retailers and contractors, on state court and federal court cases
• Deposing and preparing the company's person most knowledgeable on design history and warnings, including how they'll come across to twelve strangers
• Experts across biomechanics, accident reconstruction, treating medicine and vocational rehab
• Motions aimed at stopping their expert testifying at all
• Co counseling with partners outside California, because the group is national

What they'll ask for:

• Five to seven years of litigation, ideally product liability or mass tort, plus the California Bar
• A resume, a law school transcript and a writing sample, all three up front

It's hybrid, from either of two offices in the LA area, and the number is the same at both, $235,000 to $280,000, and a performance bonus on top. Pick whichever one saves you more freeway. You'll answer to partners in other states as well as here, which suits some people and drives others up the wall, so have a think about which one you are.