Attorney
Chicago, Illinois, 60602
Robert A. Clifford founded Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, an internationally recognized plaintiffs’ trial firm concentrating on aviation, car accidents, personal injury, medical negligence, product liability law, mass torts, and class actions. The National Law Journal has named Clifford Law Offices one of the Top 10 Litigation Boutiques in the country and has awarded Mr. Clifford the Elite Trial Lawyers’ Award. Robert Clifford Illinois Top 10 Number 1 Super Lawyers Mr. Clifford was selected by Super Lawyers, a peer-review organization, as the number one lawyer in Illinois from 2009-2016 and 2023. He has always been in the top three.
Chicago Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Powerful Chicagoans. He was named the 2012 Chicago Lawyer Person of the Year based on his trial accomplishments and his contributions to the legal community and 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 Lawyer 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 specific practice areas. Best Lawyers® recognized him as Chicago's 2019 Mass Torts Litigation / Class Actions “Lawyer of the Year” award winner. 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 the 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 four decades.
This 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. He is currently the Lead Counsel on behalf of the 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 the tragic September 11, 2001, crashes at the World Trade Center in New York. He served as lead counsel in negotiating and settling those claims that settled for $1.2 billion.
Mr. Clifford’s trial career has been marked by many record verdicts, including a young woman who suffered permanent injuries after being dragged by a semi. The jury returned a record $35 million verdict for the young woman. The most highly publicized trial in Cook County of a violinist who was severely injured after being run over by a Metra train ultimately settled after a month-long trial for $35 million. In addition to practicing law, Mr. Clifford is dedicated to the furtherance of the legal profession.
He has been actively involved 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 and 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, which brings together the best and brightest on a topic of interest to the public and that results in a special law review issue of articles by the academic and judicial participants. 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 more than 200,000 at-risk and underprivileged children in Southwest Florida.
