The 2026 Lawdragon 500 Global Plaintiff Lawyers

We are honored to introduce The 2026 Lawdragon 500 Global Plaintiff Lawyers.

This is our third annual guide to the lawyers throughout the world who have dedicated their careers to pursuing justice for individuals and businesses who have been injured by everything from antitrust violations to securities fraud; aviation accidents to mass torts; and human rights violations to social media abuse.

We're here to praise them. And praise them as we should.

Among the lawyers who’ve come a long long way together – in London, Birmingham, Ala., and Sydney, Australia – are three remarkable women who represent a new face of plaintiff advocacy in courtrooms and tribunals around the world. It’s thrilling to see – and to celebrate the emergence of such remarkable women in the elite ranks of the world’s claimant advocates.

Shazia Yamin is a disputes resolution partner at Mishcon de Reya in London. Among a growing number of dedicated claimant advocates worldwide, she specializes in large product liability and consumer group actions. She has made her mark fighting for transparency from the auto industry. She represented ClientEarth and Mums for Lungs in UK Dieselgate proceedings, winning a High Court order compelling auto manufacturers to disclose unredacted core documents on open justice grounds. She has served as lead lawyer for more than 120K Volkswagen owners in group litigations, including one in which she secured a £193M settlement for emissions test manipulations in diesel vehicles.

Diandra Fu Debrosse is managing partner for DiCello Levitt in Birmingham, Ala.; co-chair of the firm’s Mass Tort division; and co-chair of its Civil and Human Rights Litigation practice group. The powerhouse litigator has ascended to the ranks of U.S. plaintiff lawyers regularly chosen as lead counsel in massive class and multidistrict litigation actions. She is co-lead counsel in the products liability MDL against two of the world’s largest infant formula makers, Abbott Laboratories and Mead Johnson; the MDL against L’Oréal and other manufacturers of hair relaxer products marketed primarily to Black and Latina women which allegedly caused injury and disease. She also represents the City of Baltimore in lawsuits for the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse; and represents dozens of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Maryland and North Dakota counties and other jurisdictions in two separate prescription opiate MDLs.

Vavaa Mawuli is a principal in Maurice Blackburn’s Brisbane office, where she leads the Class Action practice. She amassed advocacy experience early in her career at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Sydney, conducting cases including a joint class action with Maurice Blackburn against the State of New South Wales for the wrongful imprisonment of children by police. She has represented Aboriginal workers deprived of wages and entitlements by past State governments, and served as a criminal defense lawyer in remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities and for Aboriginal Legal Services in Sydney. She joined Maurice Blackburn in 2012 to eradicate barriers to justice for individuals who have suffered from corporate and government misconduct. She is a key lawyer leading one of Australia's largest class actions, on behalf of victims of flooding in South East Queensland in January 2011.

We selected the 500 lawyers honored here through our proprietary process honed over more than 50 years, weighing robust submissions, peer critique and journalistic research. We focused principally on work in the areas of antitrust and competition, investor and shareholder rights, mass torts, consumer fraud, aviation accidents, global asset recovery and civil and human rights. Those denoted with an asterisk are members of our esteemed Hall of Fame.