Conference Report: Representing clients in multi-district litigation

 Multidistrict litigation, or MDL, now dominates federal dockets, impacting hundreds of thousands  of plaintiffs and routinely grappling with issues of national import. Though its rise is undeniable, its growth has also exposed, and helped to create, a series of deep cleavages regarding how best to adjudicate cases involving mass harms. Proponents tout MDLs’ procedural flexibility, efficiency, and access-to-justice benefits, while detractors criticize this procedural tool for restricting litigant autonomy, promoting unbounded judicial improvisation, and favoring wholesale settlements over substantive and procedural justice. 

In light of these competing narratives, on May 20, 2022, the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford Law School and the Berkeley Law Civil Justice Research Initiative hosted a small group of distinguished scholars, judges, policymakers, and practitioners to discuss the lawyer-client relationship in MDLs. . . . the Convening sought to analyze contemporary MDLs’ plaintiff-related strengths and weaknesses and to identify practical steps that judges, lawyers, or policymakers might take to address various deficiencies. 

You can read the full report here.

Thanks to the TortsProf Blog for the update.