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Clifford Law Offices: The Aviation Firm Whose Founder Was Sworn In Alone So He Could Take a Deposition That Afternoon

On the day Robert Clifford passed the Illinois bar in 1976, his employer arranged for him to be sworn in individually rather than wait for the group ceremony, because there was a deposition to take that afternoon. The case was an airline overbooking suit brought by an Illinois Supreme Court justice and his wife, and Clifford has said it produced a $204,000 verdict and a change in airline overbooking policy. He has described the rest of that apprenticeship, at Philip H. Corboy’s firm, as “carrying Phil Corboy’s lectern into court.” Eight years later he left to start his own practice, and the work the firm is now most identifiable for is the category that put him in that first deposition room: airplanes.

At a Glance

FIRM	Clifford Law Offices, P.C.
FOUNDED	1984, by Robert A. Clifford (Illinois bar, October 13, 1976)
OFFICE	120 North LaSalle Street, 36th Floor, Chicago, IL 60602 — a single office, no satellites
PRACTICE	Plaintiff-side catastrophic injury: aviation, medical malpractice and birth injury, truck and vehicle, construction, product liability, qui tam
SIZE	Roughly 30 attorneys; published counts vary between 19 and 32 depending on source
PEER RANKING	Chambers USA 2026: Band 2, Aviation Litigation (Mainly Plaintiffs), nationwide; Band 2, Litigation (Mainly Plaintiffs), Illinois
MANAGING PARTNER	Hon. Henry R. Simmons (Ret.), a retired judge
AGGREGATE CLAIM	“Over $5 billion recovered” (per the firm; not independently audited)

Origin and Background

Clifford heard Philip Corboy lecture at DePaul Law School, approached him afterward for a job, and was hired. He worked at Philip H. Corboy & Associates from 1974 to 1982 and at Corboy & Demetrio from 1982 to 1984, then co-founded Clifford & Heneley, Ltd. in 1984, which became Clifford Law Offices. The firm’s own biography, its history page, and independent encyclopedic sources all date the founding to 1984; a 2019 magazine profile loosely described it as “nearly 30 years ago,” and one firm-published CV rendering gives 1995. Awesome Attorneys uses 1984 and notes the discrepancy rather than resolving it silently. The firm has never opened a second office, which is unusual for a practice that litigates aviation cases nationally.

What Makes the Firm Structurally Different

Two mechanisms are checkable rather than asserted. The first is who screens the cases: the firm’s managing partner is a retired judge, Hon. Henry R. Simmons, and the firm states its intake posture in unusually blunt terms — “if we do not believe your case is strong, we will not string you along.” The second is academic rather than commercial. Clifford endowed the Chair in Tort Law and Social Policy at DePaul University College of Law in 1994, described at the time as the largest single gift in the school’s history, and endowed the annual Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy, which DePaul confirms reached its thirty-second year in 2026. Plaintiff firms commonly sponsor continuing legal education; endowing a named faculty chair and a three-decade scholarly conference in the field you litigate in is a different order of commitment, and it is verifiable from the university rather than the firm. The firm also runs free accredited CLE for the bar twice a year. Clifford’s own account of the case-selection posture is that he can “select the cases that I feel where our lawyers can do the most good,” because complex cases “require a lot of time and a great investment of money.”

Practice Areas

Aviation and helicopter crash litigation. Medical malpractice and birth trauma. Truck and motor vehicle collisions. Construction accidents. Product liability. Explosions and fires. Premises liability. Railroad law. Class actions. Whistleblower and qui tam. Commercial litigation.

Track Record

Matter	Result	Verification
Birth injury against West Suburban Medical Center, Oak Park — fetal monitoring alleged ignored for roughly six hours	$101 million verdict, Cook County, November 5, 2019	Independently reported (Chicago Sun-Times)
Hale v. State Farm — civil RICO alleging covert funding of an Illinois Supreme Court campaign	$250 million settlement, S.D. Illinois, September 2018	Independently reported (ABA Journal)
American Eagle Flight 4184, Roselawn, Indiana (1994; 68 killed)	$110 million aggregate settlement, N.D. Illinois, 1997	Independently reported; see the attribution note below
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 / Boeing 737 MAX 8, roughly 100 consolidated cases	Court-appointed lead counsel, N.D. Illinois, September 2019	Independently reported (Law.com)
September 11 property and financial loss claims	$1.2 billion, 2014, Clifford as lead negotiator	Per the firm
Cook County Administration Building fire (2003; six deaths)	$100 million, Clifford as lead plaintiffs’ counsel	Per the firm
United Airlines Flight 232, Sioux City (1989)	$43 million total, including a $28.2 million verdict	Per the firm
Violinist injured by a Metra train door	$29.6 million verdict, settled for $35 million after appeals	Per the firm

The $110 million Roselawn figure requires a specific caveat: contemporary reporting shows it was a global settlement negotiated by a multi-firm plaintiffs’ team that Clifford co-headed with Thomas A. Demetrio of Corboy & Demetrio and two other lawyers, and that Clifford’s own fifteen client families accounted for $64 million of the $110 million. Corboy & Demetrio publishes the same $110 million figure as its own result. Awesome Attorneys reports it as a co-led aggregate rather than a single-firm recovery. The firm’s “over $5 billion recovered” claim is firm-stated and not independently audited. Several entries on the firm’s current case-results page carry dollar figures but no case name, defendant, or court, and are not repeated here. A Yellow Cab verdict of roughly $26 million appears with a 2005 date in one source and a 2015 date in the firm’s own CV; the year is omitted here rather than guessed. Past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case.

Client Voice

Public client feedback on this firm is thinner than its profile would suggest, and the honest summary is that the record is incomplete rather than clean. Google reviews aggregated to 4.9 across eight reviews. A reviewer identified as Mary Beth Plotzke wrote in mid-2026 that an attorney at the firm “treated me with patience and compassion … answering questions, easing concerns, troubleshooting obstacles and respecting the emotional stress of my case.” A reviewer identified as Reilly Johnson wrote that his attorney “was very professional, responsive at all hours, and moved quickly throughout my case.” Three of the five retrieved Google reviews never name the firm or any attorney and use generic phrasing, which is weak evidence of anything. Martindale-Hubbell shows a 4.7 peer rating from fourteen peer reviews and no client reviews at all; Robert Clifford’s Avvo rating of 10.0 is algorithmic and his profile carries zero client reviews. Yelp lists fourteen reviews for the firm and the Better Business Bureau maintains a profile, and Awesome Attorneys could not read either. Awesome Attorneys therefore does not state that no negative reviews exist — two of the four platforms that host them were inaccessible.

Beyond the Courtroom

The bar-leadership record here is dense and consists of offices actually held rather than honors received. Robert Clifford was President of the Chicago Bar Association in 2011–2012, President of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association in 1990, and Chair of the ABA Section of Litigation in 2001–2002. Partner Kevin P. Durkin is also a former Chicago Bar Association president, and partner Sarah F. King has served as President of the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois. Beyond the DePaul chair and symposium, the firm reports a $1 million scholarship pledge to Marist High School, corporate partnership with Cristo Rey Jesuit High School since 1996 covering more than 120 students, and sponsorship of closed-captioning at WTTW. Awesome Attorneys did not identify published pro bono hours or case counts for the firm.

Recognition

A note that applies to every Illinois firm Awesome Attorneys profiles: Illinois Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4(b) states that the Supreme Court of Illinois does not recognize certifications of specialties in the practice of law, and 7.4(c) restricts the words “certified,” “specialist” and “expert.” Awesome Attorneys does not use specialist language for Illinois firms, and no Illinois lawyer’s credentials below should be read as a state-recognized specialty certification.

Peer-reviewed or invitation-only: Chambers USA 2026 Band 2 in two categories; Robert Clifford’s fellowship in the American College of Trial Lawyers since 1994, which is by invitation; Best Lawyers in America listings by peer ballot, with Clifford listed since 1993; a Martindale-Hubbell peer rating of 4.7 from fourteen peers; Public Justice’s Trial Lawyer of the Year in 2019; and the bar presidencies listed above. Commercial or self-nominated recognitions, kept separate: National Trial Lawyers Top 100 placements, an America’s Top 100 Attorneys listing, and TopVerdict.com rankings, all of which are marketing programs rather than peer findings. Super Lawyers and Lawdragon sit between the two categories — they involve editorial research but also sell badge licensing and profiles to the lawyers they list.

Illinois Legal Backdrop

In Illinois, an action for damages for personal injury must generally be commenced within two years after the cause of action accrued, under 735 ILCS 5/13-202. Illinois applies modified comparative fault: under 735 ILCS 5/2-1116, a plaintiff is barred from recovering damages if the trier of fact finds the plaintiff’s contributory fault is more than 50 percent, and any damages allowed are diminished in proportion to the plaintiff’s share of fault. For a person who was a minor when injured, 735 ILCS 5/13-211 allows the action to be brought within two years after the person turns 18. Different and much shorter deadlines apply to some categories of defendant, including local public entities, and to medical malpractice, which carries its own limitation and repose structure. None of this is legal advice, and the interaction between these provisions is exactly the kind of question that should go to a licensed Illinois lawyer promptly rather than be worked out from a statute list.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

The clearest thing about this firm is that a national aviation practice runs out of one floor on LaSalle Street, with a retired judge screening the intake and a founder who has spent thirty years funding the academic study of the field he litigates in. That combination is rare and it is checkable from outside the firm. The honest trade-offs are two. First, a single-office practice of roughly thirty lawyers that selects for complex, expensive cases is not built for the routine claim, and the firm says as much itself. Second, the public record is not spotless: a 2005 Illinois Appellate Court decision reinstated a legal malpractice claim against the firm arising from advice that a two-year limitations period applied where a one-year municipal deadline governed, holding that questions of fact existed as to causation — a ruling that the claim could proceed, not a finding of liability, and one whose final disposition Awesome Attorneys could not determine. The firm also contributed $250,000 in 2014 to a political committee that spent against a sitting Illinois Supreme Court justice while the firm was litigating a RICO case concerning that justice’s earlier campaign funding. That is lawful political activity and Clifford has defended it on transparency grounds, but a prospective client researching this firm will find it. For a catastrophic injury or an air crash where the defendant is a manufacturer or an airline and the case will take years and serious money, this is a short-list firm. For a straightforward collision claim, it is likely not the firm that will take the call.

Methodology and Sourcing

Researched from the firm’s own site, including its attorney roster, case results, aviation and community pages, and Robert A. Clifford’s published CV; cross-referenced against the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission’s public lawyer record for Robert Anthony Clifford (admitted October 13, 1976, authorized to practice, no public discipline found), Chambers USA, Best Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell, the American College of Trial Lawyers fellow directory, and DePaul University College of Law’s own pages on the Clifford Chair and Symposium. Verdict and settlement figures were checked against Chicago Sun-Times, ABA Journal and Law.com reporting where independent coverage exists. Lopez v. Clifford Law Offices, P.C., 362 Ill. App. 3d 969 (1st Dist. 2005) was read in the original. Illinois limitations, comparative fault and minority-tolling provisions were verified against the Illinois General Assembly’s published text of 735 ILCS 5/13-202, 5/2-1116 and 5/13-211. Illinois Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4 was verified against the published rule and the American Bar Association’s state-certification summary. Awesome Attorneys was unable to access Yelp and Better Business Bureau review content, and did not run individual disciplinary checks on every attorney at the firm.

Publisher Disclosure and Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal directory and editorial publication. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by Clifford Law Offices, P.C. prior to publication. Awesome Attorneys may in the future offer sponsored placement products to attorneys and firms, including this one, but sponsorship has no bearing on the editorial content, inclusion, or findings of this profile. Facts in this profile are current only as of the research date and may change.