Robert “Bob” Boatman has spent nearly four decades building some of Arizona’s largest plaintiff verdicts from inside a 1978-founded, 40-plus-practice-area firm. Today he co-chairs Gallagher & Kennedy’s catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death group alongside his son, Matthew.
AN AWESOME ATTORNEYS EDITORIAL PROFILE Independently researched from the firm’s own attorney biographies and press releases, peer- and client-rating directories, and publicly available client reviews.
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AT A GLANCE
| FIRM Gallagher & Kennedy, P.A. — Injury Lawyers practice group | FOUNDED 1978 |
|---|---|
| STRUCTURE Full-service Arizona firm; 7th-largest in the state (firm-reported) | INJURY PRACTICE GROUP Plaintiffs’ Personal Injury & Wrongful Death (15 attorneys, firm-reported) |
| LEAD ATTORNEY Robert W. “Bob” Boatman (career spanning ~38–39 years) | NEXT GENERATION Matthew Boatman, attorney in the same practice group |
| PHOENIX OFFICE 2575 E Camelback Rd, Ste 1100, Phoenix, AZ 85016 | SIGNATURE EDGE Big-firm investigative and expert-witness resources applied to a plaintiffs’ docket, with two generations of the same family as lead counsel |
| REPORTED RESULTS Jury verdicts to $17,000,000; $11.8M Arizona Attorney General settlement (2026) | CONTACT (602) 530-8400 · gallagherkennedyinjury.com |
Most large, full-service law firms treat personal injury as a minor line of business, if they handle it at all. Gallagher & Kennedy is an exception: founded in 1978 as a litigation-focused practice, it has grown into the seventh-largest law firm in Arizona by its own account, with roughly 40 practice areas — and, running through all of it, a Plaintiffs’ Personal Injury and Wrongful Death group.
That group’s public face for nearly four decades has been Robert W. “Bob” Boatman, a trial lawyer with career verdicts as high as $17 million and a current docket that includes his son Matthew as a fellow attorney in the same practice.
A Litigation Firm First, Since 1978
Gallagher & Kennedy was founded in 1978, primarily as a litigation-based practice, and has grown into one of Arizona’s largest full-service law firms — by its own description, the seventh-largest in the state. The firm’s practice spans dozens of areas well outside personal injury, including business litigation, environmental law, Native American law, aviation and aerospace, real estate, and mergers and acquisitions. Its personal-injury work sits inside that larger institution as a dedicated Plaintiffs’ Personal Injury and Wrongful Death practice group, giving the group’s attorneys access to institutional resources — investigators, expert-witness networks, appellate support — that a standalone boutique of the same size would have to build on its own.
The firm describes its injury team as 15 attorneys with roughly 300 cumulative years of experience representing injured people, supported by paralegals, intake specialists, and records reviewers.
Bob Boatman: Nearly Four Decades of Plaintiff-Side Trial Work
Robert W. Boatman, an Arizona State University graduate, has practiced personal-injury and wrongful-death law for nearly four decades and co-chairs Gallagher & Kennedy’s catastrophic personal-injury practice. Over that career, he has obtained jury verdicts or awards as high as $17,000,000, $14,000,000, and $5,000,000, along with what the firm describes as additional settlements in the hundreds of millions of dollars in aggregate.
Boatman’s most publicly documented case outside a courtroom verdict may be a product-liability matter in which he compelled two major automotive manufacturers to acknowledge a vehicle defect, resulting in a recall covering more than 500,000 vehicles. More recently, working jointly with fellow Gallagher & Kennedy attorney Shannon L. Clark, Boatman helped the Arizona Attorney General’s Office secure an $11.8 million settlement and injunctive relief against a home-warranty company accused of deceptive marketing — announced in February 2026 and described by the firm as among the largest settlements of its kind in the United States.
Bob Boatman’s son, Matthew Boatman, now practices alongside him at Gallagher & Kennedy, a continuity the firm has highlighted in its own communications as a family legacy within the injury practice; public client reviews independently corroborate that both Boatmans are active in client-facing case work. Boatman’s frequent co-counsel Shannon L. Clark began his legal career on the insurance side before moving to plaintiff’s work, per the firm’s own attorney profile — a defense-to-plaintiff trajectory shared by more than one attorney elsewhere in this series.
What Gallagher & Kennedy’s Injury Team Handles
- Car, truck, taxi, rideshare (Uber/Lyft), and bus accidents (per the firm)
- Motorcycle and bicycle accidents (per the firm)
- Medical malpractice (per the firm)
- Aviation accidents (per the firm)
- Burn injuries (per the firm)
- Wrongful death (per the firm)
- Product liability and mass tort/class-action matters (per the firm)
The firm’s injury attorneys work on a contingency-fee basis: payment comes only from a settlement or judgment the client recovers, and the firm states that clients owe nothing if its lawyers do not obtain compensation on their behalf.
Track Record
Gallagher & Kennedy’s published results center on Bob Boatman’s career figures — jury verdicts and awards as high as $17,000,000, $14,000,000, and $5,000,000, plus what the firm describes as hundreds of millions of dollars in aggregate settlements — and on specific recent matters such as the $11.8 million Attorney General settlement in early 2026.
Past-Results Disclaimer. Every case is different, and results depend on each matter’s specific facts and circumstances. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any other matter. Figures above are reported by the firm on its own published materials and have not been independently audited by Awesome Attorneys.
In Their Clients’ Words
Public reviews of Gallagher & Kennedy’s injury practice, posted on the firm’s own site and on Google, consistently name specific attorneys and staff rather than referring to the firm generically. Reviewers describe Bob Boatman as a “straight shooter” who, along with his longtime assistant, personally managed communication with hospitals, doctors, and multiple insurance companies on a client’s behalf. Other reviews single out Matthew Boatman’s team for responsiveness, and attorney Maria Raciti is separately credited by name for diligence on claims of varying size.
Beyond the Injury Docket
Gallagher & Kennedy describes itself, at the firm level, as placing significant value on community involvement — encouraging attorneys across all of its practice groups to serve on boards, councils, and committees and to take part in philanthropic work in the communities the firm serves, per the firm’s own site.
Recognition
The firm reports 51 to 58 Gallagher & Kennedy attorneys named to Best Lawyers in America® across roughly 46 practice areas in its 2025 and 2026 editions, with two attorneys named “Lawyer of the Year” in 2026; Bob Boatman has been listed in Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs since 2006 and was named Best Lawyers’ Phoenix “Lawyer of the Year” for Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs in 2025. Twenty-three Gallagher & Kennedy attorneys were recognized as 2025 Southwest Super Lawyers or Rising Stars, and Boatman and colleague Woodrow “Woody” Thompson were named among Forbes Advisor’s Best Phoenix, AZ Personal Injury Lawyers for 2025. Boatman is also a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a member of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and the International Society of Barristers.
The Arizona Legal Backdrop
What follows is general legal information about Arizona law, not legal advice, and is especially relevant given this practice group’s emphasis on product-liability and catastrophic-injury claims. Arizona generally requires a personal-injury lawsuit — including most product-liability and wrongful-death claims — to be filed within two years of the injury or death (A.R.S. § 12-542). Claims against a government entity instead require a Notice of Claim within 180 days (A.R.S. § 12-821.01) and suit within one year (A.R.S. § 12-821). Arizona applies pure comparative negligence (A.R.S. § 12-2505): an injured plaintiff may recover damages even if partially at fault, with the award reduced by their percentage of fault. In product-liability cases specifically, a defendant manufacturer will often attempt to shift blame onto the plaintiff’s own conduct, which is one reason these cases frequently require expert testimony to resolve.
This section is general legal information about Arizona statutes, not legal advice, and may not reflect changes after July 2026. Anyone with a potential injury claim should consult a licensed Arizona attorney promptly.
The Awesome Attorneys Assessment
Gallagher & Kennedy’s injury practice occupies a specific niche in the Phoenix market: a genuinely large, 40-practice-area institution built since 1978, with a plaintiffs’ group led by a near-four-decade trial lawyer whose case history includes some of the largest individual verdicts documented in this series, now joined by his son in the same practice. Its scale gives it investigative and expert-witness resources that boutique firms must assemble case by case, while its client reviews suggest cases are still handled with the personal attention more often associated with a small firm.
METHODOLOGY & SOURCING
This profile was compiled from publicly available sources, including Gallagher & Kennedy’s main firm site (gknet.com) and its dedicated injury-practice site (gallagherkennedyinjury.com), attorney biography pages, and press releases; third-party peer- and client-rating directories (Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, Forbes Advisor, Martindale-Hubbell); business and consumer listings (Yelp, Facebook, Nextdoor, LawInfo); and publicly posted client reviews across those platforms. Verdict figures, settlement amounts, and awards are the firm’s own published claims or named third-party directory recognitions and are attributed as such. Client testimonial themes are paraphrased from publicly posted reviews rather than reproduced verbatim. All figures, dates, and credentials should be re-verified against primary sources prior to publication.
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Facts, figures, and claims in this profile were independently researched from public sources as described in the Methodology & Sourcing section and are current only as of the research date; they are subject to change without notice, and readers should confirm any detail directly with the firm before relying on it. This notice supplements, and does not replace, the Attorney Advertising notice at the top of this profile.