Plaintiff-Side Summer Associate Experience: Stewart Lucas

Stewart Lucas

UC Berkeley School of Law ’24

Summer Firm: Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger

(San Francisco, CA)

Coming from a political background with a summer at the Public Defender’s office, I arrived at plaintiff’s side work thinking I was taking one step back from public interest. I couldn’t have been more wrong. While at Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger, I advocated more vigorously for the common good than ever.

Like many of my plaintiffs-side peers, I had no idea about this line of work when I came to law school. I knew the billboard lawyers and ambulance chasers that everyone associates with personal injury and plaintiff-side work.

But each client or group of clients I worked with had a cause worth fighting for. Each assignment over my summer was a call to participate in those fights, not just a set of tasks. I worked for the dead, the paralyzed, the defrauded, the lied to. I worked for the wronged. And I loved it.

Over this summer, a podcast came out called “The Retrievals” about women at the Yale Medical Clinic whose pain was systematically ignored. A nurse was stealing pain medicine that the women were supposed to receive. When they cried out in anguish, nobody did anything. A plaintiff-side firm is now suing Yale. Susan Burton, the show's host, summarized what the lawsuit means:

“A lawsuit is a way to hold an institution accountable. To send a message or teach a lesson. To advance systemic change. It is also a way to get something, to make it fair, and to announce, you should not have dismissed me. You dismissed me once. You may not dismiss me again.”

I think Susan Burton is more accurately describing plaintiff-side work with this quote. She describes it exactly how I see it: a way for institutions to be held accountable. This level of accountability was something I never found in the government or any other part of the law. It’s why I came to law school and will stay on this side of the v.