Tomasik Kotin Kasserman: Three Founders, Three Bar Presidencies, One Thirteen-Year-Old Firm

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At a Glance

Firm	Tomasik Kotin Kasserman, LLC
Founded	April 2013, by Timothy S. Tomasik (from Clifford Law Offices) with Daniel M. Kotin and Shawn S. Kasserman (both from Corboy & Demetrio)
Office	161 N. Clark Street, Suite 3050, Chicago, IL 60601 — single office, 30th floor at Clark and Randolph
Focus	Catastrophic injury; medical negligence and birth injury; mass transportation and aviation; construction; product liability; sexual abuse
Side of the docket	Plaintiff only
Size	12 attorneys
Signature result	$25.9M verdict, Jacobs v. Yellow Cab, Cook County, March 17, 2015 — tried with Robert A. Clifford
Bar standing	Kasserman, President of the Illinois State Bar Association 2023–24; Tomasik, President of the Chicago Bar Association 2022–23; Kotin, President of the Chicago Bar Association 2016–17
Fee model	Contingency (per the firm)
Disciplinary record	No public discipline on file with the Illinois ARDC for any of the twelve attorneys

I. A Journalism Major, a Construction Worker, and a Law Clerk for Philip Corboy

Timothy S. Tomasik took a journalism degree from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1986 — confirmed by the university’s own alumni magazine, not just his biography — and started his legal career as a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, Bureau of Special Prosecutions. Shawn S. Kasserman worked construction before law school, clerked for Philip H. Corboy himself while at DePaul, and was hired as a Corboy associate in 1990; until April 2013 he had worked at exactly one firm. Daniel M. Kotin has taught Civil Procedure as adjunct faculty at Loyola University Chicago School of Law since 1998 and coaches its national mock trial team.

When they left — Tomasik after fifteen years at Clifford Law Offices, Kotin and Kasserman from Corboy & Demetrio — the Illinois State Bar Association covered it under the headline “Tomasik Kotin Kasserman unites stars from Corboy, Clifford Offices.” Robert Geimer joined at launch as the medical-negligence partner, effectively a fourth founder without the billing. The original address was 10 South LaSalle Street, Suite 2920; the phone number, 312-605-8800, has not changed since.

II. The Mechanism: Standing in the Bar, Not Spend on Television

Most Chicago injury firms compete on advertising reach or on trial volume. This one competes on institutional position, and the evidence is unusual enough to state as a fact rather than a compliment: all three name partners have served as president of a major Illinois bar organization.

Kasserman was installed as the 147th president of the Illinois State Bar Association on June 1, 2023, having won a contested election for Third Vice-President in 2020 — confirmed by the American Bar Foundation and by the ISBA itself. Tomasik was sworn in as president of the Chicago Bar Association on June 23, 2022. Kotin held the same CBA office in 2016–17. Kotin was appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court Rules Committee in January 2025; Tomasik to an Illinois Supreme Court committee a month earlier, and to the ABOTA Foundation Board of Trustees in November 2025. Tomasik and Kasserman are both Fellows of the American College of Trial Lawyers, an invitation-only body.

What that buys a client is referrals, co-counsel access on cases too large for twelve lawyers, and credibility with judges who know the names from committee work. What it does not buy is capacity, and the firm is candid about operating at twelve. The practical consequence shows up in its biggest matters: the $25.9 million Yellow Cab verdict was tried jointly with Robert Clifford, and the $12.6 million anesthesiology verdict is described by the firm itself as co-counsel work.

One credential to correct rather than repeat: no one at this firm has been president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. Kotin and Kasserman have both served on ITLA’s Board of Managers, Kotin since 2001. That is a different and lesser thing, and it is worth saying because ITLA presidencies are common currency among Chicago plaintiff firms.

III. Practice Areas

• Catastrophic personal injury — traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, amputation, burns
• Medical negligence, including birth injury and cerebral palsy, anesthesiology and surgical error
• Mass transportation disasters — rail, transit and aviation
• Construction negligence
• Product liability
• Trucking and motor vehicle collisions
• Premises liability and nursing home neglect
• Sexual abuse
• Toxic exposure

The firm also litigates outside Illinois, including a Broward County, Florida jury verdict in February 2025. A directory listing that credits it with 57 practice areas across nine attorneys should be read as search-engine taxonomy, not departmental depth.

IV. Track Record

Past results do not guarantee or predict the outcome of any future case. Sources are named, co-counsel is identified, and figures we could not confirm outside the firm’s own materials are marked.

$25,900,000	Marc Jacobs v. Yellow Cab, Cook County No. 05 L 10138, verdict March 17, 2015 — $21,989,291 to Marc Jacobs and $3,960,000 to Deborah Jacobs after a 12% comparative reduction, from a 2005 I-294 crash. The jury deliberated about three hours. Ranked the largest Illinois verdict of 2015 by the National Law Journal. Tried jointly with Robert A. Clifford of Clifford Law Offices, whose own account of the case is headlined “obtained by Clifford and Tomasik.”
Appellate win, Arbogast v. Chicago Cubs	Illinois Appellate Court, First District, January 18, 2024 — an arbitration clause on a media credential held unconscionable, allowing the client’s suit to proceed. Tomasik and Philip Terrazzino. Not a dollar figure, but the only reported appellate outcome we found for the firm, and it is a win.
$1.2 billion (World Trade Center)	The 9/11 aviation-security settlement, reached February 2010 and affirmed by the Second Circuit in 2011. Tomasik’s role as one of the lead counsel on the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee is independently corroborated by the ISBA and the University of Colorado. This was Clifford Law Offices work, three years before this firm existed.

Figures we could not verify. The firm’s results page lists more than two hundred outcomes with no case names, courts or years. Independently, we corroborated the Yellow Cab verdict and the WTC settlement. Everything else — $30.2M, $22M (twice), $13M, $12.6M, $10.2M, $10M, $9.5M, $9M, $8.4M, $7.75M, $7.5M, the $75M John Hancock scaffolding settlement, the $43M in combined commuter-rail settlements, and the career aggregates (“over $300 million” for Geimer, “hundreds of millions” for Kotin) — appears only on the firm’s own site or on attorney-supplied directory profiles. Many are settlements and therefore confidential, which explains the absence without curing it.

V. Client Voice

“Like many of the other low star reviews here, my case was taken on and then when they realized they would actually have to work for a settlement, they dumped me. Another attorney took on my case and when the file arrived at the new attorneys office it was EMPTY. They had done nothing in three months. Important evidence was not preserved.”
— “P B,” 1 star, Google, approximately March 2026

“My son suffered a traumatic brain injury due to an overly aggressive bouncer at a club. Tim and his team were brought on to the case and it was the best decision ever!!!…Even with all the post trial stuff, they remain active and communicative.”
— Tiffany Bracero, Google, approximately August 2026

“I came to Loren with a tough motorcycle crash case — the kind that other attorneys might walk away from — and he took it on without hesitation and delivered beyond my expectations.”
— Anna Joanna, Google, approximately June 2026

Two things about the ratings deserve stating rather than averaging. First, the aggregator that publishes a “5.0” headline for this firm displays five Google reviews on the same page including the one-star above, and computes the average on a subset that excludes it. A 5.0 sourced there is a filtered number. Second, a directory that does not state its source reports 3 out of 5 across 16 Google reviews — consistent with the reviewer’s own reference to “many of the other low star reviews,” but unsourced, and we are not publishing it as fact. We could not read the firm’s Google Business Profile directly, and we are not assigning it a star rating on this page.

Note also the pattern in the recent positives: they name associates — Loren Legorreta, Eddie Hettel — rather than the founders. At a twelve-lawyer firm where the name partners carry bar presidencies and Supreme Court committee seats, that is worth knowing before you assume who will handle your file.

VI. Where the Numbers Come From

The most substantive question about this firm is not competence. It is attribution.

Tomasik Kotin Kasserman was founded in April 2013. Its homepage results strip leads with $30.2M, $29.6M, $25.9M and $22M — and at least two of those were earned before the firm existed, at the founders’ prior firms, with no notation of that anywhere on the page.

The $29.6 million Metra verdict is the clearest problem. It arose from the September 17, 2005 Rock Island line derailment and was, at the time, the largest Illinois verdict for an individual injured in a mass-transit crash. Corboy & Demetrio’s own contemporaneous press release credits “Corboy & Demetrio Chicago personal injury lawyers Thomas Demetrio and William Gibbs.” Daniel Kotin is not mentioned, and Corboy’s separate case page for the same litigation does not name him either. Kotin’s biography says that “along with Tom Demetrio, Dan set a record…when he obtained $29.6 million.” He was a Corboy partner at the time, so involvement is entirely plausible — but his prior firm’s own account of the case credits two other lawyers, and we found no independent source placing him on the trial team. The figure then appears on this firm’s homepage as this firm’s result. We are flagging the attribution as unverified rather than repeating or dismissing it.

The same structural point, more benignly, applies to the $1.2 billion WTC settlement (2010) and the $75 million John Hancock scaffolding settlement (2002) — three and eleven years before the firm opened, both Clifford Law Offices matters. Tomasik’s role in the WTC litigation is independently confirmed; the presentation of the figure as a TKK result is the issue. And the $25.9 million Yellow Cab verdict, which is genuinely post-founding and genuinely Tomasik’s, appears on the results page at its full value with no note that Robert Clifford tried it with him.

Two smaller matters, both verifiable:

• A factual error on the firm’s own site. Tomasik’s biography says he was sworn in as the “146th President of the Chicago Bar Association.” The ISBA, reporting the same swearing-in on the same date, says 149th.
• Two named partners publish no education at all. Philip Terrazzino and Heather Begley have no education section on their bios — no law school, no year — at a firm that details education for everyone else. Begley’s law school had to be sourced from a directory. Separately, James P. McKay, Jr. is listed among the attorneys as “Of Counsel,” and his ARDC registration lists his own practice rather than this firm; the attorneys index displays all twelve names without role labels, so a visitor cannot tell.

What we did not find, having looked: no ARDC discipline against any of the twelve attorneys — every record reads “None,” and our search method was validated against control surnames that return real disciplinary records. No malpractice suit against the firm. No sanctions. No reversed or reduced TKK verdict. No deceased or departed attorney still on the roster; the movement over thirteen years has been inbound and promotional.

One caution for anyone researching this firm: the $148.19 million Tierney Darden verdict against the City of Chicago surfaces near these names in search results. That is Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard’s case, not this firm’s.

VII. Beyond the Courtroom

Kotin has taught Civil Procedure at Loyola University Chicago School of Law since 1998 and coaches its national mock trial team. Tomasik taught at the ABOTA National Trial College at Northwestern Law in April 2026 and was appointed to the University of Denver Sturm College of Law Dean’s Advisory Board in February 2024; he served fifteen years on the Chicago Bar Association’s Judicial Evaluation Committee and received its William J. White Award of Excellence in 2009. Kotin received the Justice John Paul Stevens Award in 2023.

The firm runs a “Path to Law” scholarship of $2,000 per semester for undergraduates with household income at or below $100,000 and a GPA of 3.5 or higher, currently open for Spring 2027. It appears on Chicago Bar Foundation campaign participant lists and supports Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to Youth. Loren Legorreta coaches an annual mock trial competition for Chicago-area Catholic high schools.

We found no formal pro bono program or published pro bono hours. That is an absence of evidence rather than evidence of absence.

VIII. Credentials and Recognition

Peer-elected and invitation-only, verified against the conferring body:

• Shawn S. Kasserman — President, Illinois State Bar Association, 2023–24 (147th); Chair, ISBA Young Lawyers Division, 1997–98; Fellow, American College of Trial Lawyers (2013); Fellow, American Bar Foundation; ABOTA member.
• Timothy S. Tomasik — President, Chicago Bar Association, 2022–23; Fellow, American College of Trial Lawyers (March 2018); Fellow, American Bar Foundation (2018); Fellow, International Society of Barristers; ABOTA member since February 2014 and immediate past President of its Illinois chapter; elected to the ABOTA Foundation Board of Trustees, November 17, 2025.
• Daniel M. Kotin — President, Chicago Bar Association, 2016–17; President, The Chicago Inn of Court; appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court Rules Committee, January 6, 2025; ITLA Board of Managers since 2001; Life Fellow, ABOTA Foundation.
• Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent — Kotin, Kasserman and Geimer. The firm-level peer rating of 5.0 rests on five peer reviews.

Peer-nominated but commercially monetized: Super Lawyers, which named Tomasik, Kotin and Kasserman to the 2021 Illinois Top 100, and Leading Lawyers. Both use peer nomination and both sell profiles and plaques to those selected.

Paid marketing programs, which should not be read as peer honors: The National Trial Lawyers “Top 100” and “Top 10 Trucking Trial Lawyers in Illinois” (a dues-based membership organisation); the National Association of Distinguished Counsel “Nation’s Top One Percent”; and Avvo’s ratings of 10.0, 10.0 and 9.8 — which are algorithmic, computed from self-supplied profile data. Kotin and Kasserman each carry a “Superb” Avvo rating with zero client reviews behind it.

We could not confirm whether any TKK attorney holds a Best Lawyers listing, and Kasserman’s Illinois Bar Foundation dates are given differently by the firm (2015–16) and by a directory (board chair 2008–2017). We have not resolved it.

IX. The Illinois Legal Backdrop, in Plain English

General information, not legal advice. Statutes were verified as noted in the Methodology section; deadlines turn on facts a lawyer has to look at.

Illinois does not recognize legal specialists. 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, nor does it recognize certifications of expertise in any phase of the practice of law by any agency, governmental or private, or by any group, organization or association.” Rule 7.4(c) forbids using “certified,” “specialist” or “expert” to describe a lawyer’s qualifications, except to identify an actual certificate or award and then only with a disclaimer that Illinois does not recognize specialty certifications and that the credential is not required to practice here. Registered patent attorneys are the only exception. No lawyer is described as a specialist anywhere in this profile.

Two years, usually. 735 ILCS 5/13-202 gives two years from accrual for a personal injury action.

Fifty-one percent ends the case. 735 ILCS 5/2-1116 bars a plaintiff more than 50% at fault; at 50% or below, damages are reduced in proportion. The Yellow Cab verdict above is a live illustration — a 12% finding against the plaintiff reduced the award accordingly. No contributory fault may be attributed to a plaintiff suing over childhood sexual abuse.

Children get the clock back. 735 ILCS 5/13-211 gives a person injured before turning 18 two years from their eighteenth birthday.

Public bodies are far shorter — and this matters most in transit cases. Under 745 ILCS 10/8-101(a), a claim against a local public entity or its employee must be filed within one year. Subsection (b) gives two years, with a four-year repose, only for claims arising out of patient care.

The CTA is one year, and there is no longer a notice requirement. 70 ILCS 3605/41 gives one year from accrual to sue the Chicago Transit Authority. The six-month written notice requirement that older articles still describe was repealed effective June 1, 2009 by P.A. 96-12. Anyone relying on a web page that still recites it is relying on dead law.

Wrongful death. Under 740 ILCS 180/1 and 180/2, the action is brought by the personal representative for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin, generally within two years of death; five years where the death resulted from violent intentional conduct, or one year after final disposition of a related criminal case for certain charged offenses.

Rail and aviation matters frequently involve federal law and carriers in more than one state, and the deadlines above are not the whole picture in those cases.

X. The Awesome Attorneys Assessment

The specific, checkable thing about Tomasik Kotin Kasserman is that its three name partners have between them led the Illinois State Bar Association and the Chicago Bar Association twice, sit on Illinois Supreme Court committees, and hold two American College of Trial Lawyers fellowships. That is not decoration. In a catastrophic case it is what gets a small firm co-counsel on a matter it could not staff alone, and it is why Robert Clifford tried the Yellow Cab case beside them rather than instead of them.

The trade-off is the same fact viewed from the client’s side. Twelve lawyers is not capacity for a mass-transportation disaster or a multi-plaintiff product case, and the firm’s own biggest results are co-counsel matters — which is a sound way to run a boutique and a reason to ask, before you sign, who will actually try your case and whose firm will carry the costs. The recent client reviews name associates, not the founders, which is ordinary at any firm but worth confirming when the founders are also running bar associations.

The second trade-off is one of presentation. Two of the four headline numbers on the homepage were earned at Clifford and Corboy before this firm opened its doors, and one of them — the $29.6 million Metra verdict — is credited by the prior firm’s own press release to two lawyers who are not Daniel Kotin. That is not fabrication; a partner at a firm can fairly claim its work. It does mean the honest question to ask at intake is which of these results the lawyers in this room obtained, at this firm, and which they participated in elsewhere. A firm with three bar presidencies will answer that question straight.

This firm is right for a catastrophic case with real complexity — a brain injury, a birth injury, a transit or aviation matter — where institutional standing and the ability to bring in co-counsel are worth more than a large in-house bench. It is a poorer fit for a routine collision claim, and for a client who wants the name on the door handling the day-to-day.

Methodology & Sourcing

Research conducted September 13, 2026. Attorney admission dates and disciplinary status were taken from Illinois ARDC registration records for all twelve attorneys individually, not from the firm; both ARDC search interfaces are AJAX-driven and return deceptive empty results to naive queries, so the method was validated against control surnames returning known disciplinary records before any null finding was relied on. Verdicts and appellate outcomes were checked against published opinions, the National Law Journal‘s 2015 ranking, and the contemporaneous press releases of Clifford Law Offices and Corboy & Demetrio, which is how the attribution questions in Section VI surfaced. Bar credentials were verified against the Illinois State Bar Association, the Chicago Bar Association, the American Bar Foundation and the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association’s own rosters. Statutes were verified against the Illinois General Assembly (735 ILCS 5/13-202, 5/2-1116, 5/13-211), the Illinois Courts’ official rule text (Ill. R. Prof’l Conduct 7.4), and the current Illinois Compiled Statutes as published by Justia and corroborated by Illinois Legal Aid Online (745 ILCS 10/8-101, 70 ILCS 3605/41, 740 ILCS 180/1–2). No Google star rating is published here because the firm’s Business Profile could not be read directly and the available figures conflict. Claims we could not verify are marked as unverified rather than softened or omitted.

Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any firm profiled on this site. Inclusion is not paid placement, and no firm pays to appear, to be positioned, or to have material removed. “Awesome Attorneys” is a brand name only; it is not a rating, ranking, certification or assessment of any lawyer’s ability. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and reading it creates no attorney-client relationship. Facts are current only as of the research date above, and firm addresses, rosters, credentials and case outcomes change. Verify anything you intend to rely on directly with the firm and with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.