The 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers

We’re honored to recognize The 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers.

These amazing advocates find pathways to justice for investors who have been defrauded, companies who have been blocked from fair competition and consumers who have been duped, hornswoggled and otherwise had their rights trampled on by ruthless corporations, from social media to pharmaceuticals.

This is our 9^th edition reporting on leading lights of the plaintiff financial bar. This guide and the practices it represents have grown exponentially since 2007, when we first published a guide to plaintiff lawyers. Resumed in 2019, it reflects the astounding scale of wealth and, some would say, greed that permeates big business.

Year by year, the accomplishments of these lawyers astound in both the sheer size of the financial compensation they achieve and in the perseverance and legal skill required to succeed in these cases.

Sharon K. Robertson of Cohen Milstein in New York is a standout in pharmaceutical antitrust litigation, among the range of class action matters she handles. Based in New York, she leads the firm’s innovative pay-for-delay lawsuits alleging pharmaceutical brand manufacturers entered into non-compete agreements with generic manufacturers to delay entry of lower-priced generic products. She also leads claims that some generic drug manufacturers conspired to inflate prices of their drug products. She was part of the trial team that won a $400M verdict in In re Urethanes Antitrust Litigation, which was trebled to $1.2B – the largest price-fixing verdict in U.S. history. She was also on the team that won Public Justice’s 2024 Trial Lawyer of the Year award for their work holding Exxon Mobil accountable for atrocities committed by its contractors on Indonesian villagers.

W. Mark Lanier of Houston’s Lanier Law Firm brings his powerful advocacy to the courtroom winning groundbreaking verdicts time and time again. Recently, he won a breakthrough battle to begin to hold social media accountable, leading a team that won $6M for an individual against Meta and YouTube for intentionally building an addictive social media platform. He has won more than $20B in verdicts, including a $650.6M jury verdict against retail pharmacies including CVS, Walgreens and those operated by Walmart for failure to follow guidelines when dispensing opioids. He won his first eye-popping verdict, for $480M, in 1990 for Rubicon on its claim Amoco wrongly backed out of a contract to buy Wyoming oil fields. He is also a pastor, founder of the Christian Trial Lawyers Association and a Sunday School teacher on Biblical literacy to 700 members of the Champion Forest Baptist Church.

Kara M. Wolke is co-chair of Glancy Prongay’s Securities Litigation practice. The Los Angeles-based Wolke served as lead counsel in In re: Alibaba Group Ltd. Securities Litigation, winning $433.5M for investors who claimed they were misled in disclosures about the company’s antitrust regulatory risks and compliance. She also was on the team that successfully defeated the claim of copyright ownership to the song “Happy Birthday to You” on behalf of artists forced to pay licensing fees. They won $14M and the song was put in the public domain. She leads the firm’s pro bono efforts and is a volunteer attorney for KIND (Kids In Need of Defense), representing unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children in custody and deportation proceedings, and helping win legal permanent U.S. residency status.

We selected members of this guide through our time-honed process of submissions, independent research and vetting. We are extremely grateful for the submissions we received. Members of the Hall of Fame are denoted with an asterisk.