Jean Martin on Class Actions, Data Privacy, and Building a Movement for Women Litigators

Jean Martin on Class Actions, Data Privacy, and Building a Movement for Women Litigators

In this episode, Ray DeLorenzi sits down with Jean Martin, a mass torts and class action litigator who recently joined AWKO as founding head of its consumer class action practice. Her path to plaintiff's litigation was unconventional: childhood courthouse visits in North Carolina, business school, candy manufacturing, Wake Forest Law School. Early asbestos work led to a neurodevelopmental injuries case that lost on a Daubert ruling two nights before trial, but shaped her instincts as a litigator. Jean credits her economics and business background with giving her an edge in damages modeling and expert depositions, and emphasizes the importance of remembering the human behind every class member. Jean sees AI and data misuse as the next major wave of litigation, targeting tech companies that monetize user data and manipulate images. She notes the irony of AI itself now appearing in class action objections and client inquiries, and why plaintiff lawyers need to collaborate to succeed in that space. The conversation closes with Class of Our Own, the invitation-only summit Jean founded four years ago for women class action lawyers. Now drawing 140 attendees with a 46-person waitlist, the free event has become a sisterhood that gives women visibility and community in a profession that has long offered such networks to men informally. At a firm with ten female partners, Jean reflects on what it means to have "coup sisters" in her corner.

Eric Cramer on Antitrust, Fighter Pay, and Using the Law to Drive Social Change

In this episode of Raising the Bar with RebuttalPR, host Ray DeLorenzi sits down with Eric Cramer, chairman of Berger Montague and co-chair of its antitrust department, whose career spans more than three decades of plaintiff-side class action work and more than $4 billion in recoveries for workers, consumers, fighters, and others harmed by concentrated corporate power. Eric traces his path from Woodstock to Princeton and Harvard Law School, where he sidestepped big-law recruiting in favor of environmental public interest work. He shares how a chance meeting brought him to Philadelphia, how a small generalist firm threw him into depositions and appellate arguments from day one, and how a 1995 conversation with Berger Montague's founding partner set the course for his career. The conversation moves into Eric's early work on nuclear weapons facility cases, including communities around Rocky Flats and Hanford and prisoners at Oregon State Penitentiary who were irradiated in Cold War experiments. He explains how those cases taught him to translate complex science and economics for judges and juries, a skill that carried directly into antitrust work and a deep facility for econometrics and economic proof. Eric then walks through the UFC fighter pay antitrust case: how the UFC used exclusive long-term contracts to lock fighters out of competing organizations, suppress pay to well below 20 percent of sport revenues, and monopolize the market for elite MMA. He covers the economic proof, the media dynamics of litigating against a powerful sports entity, and the resulting settlement for the fighter class. The episode closes with Eric's take on the state of antitrust enforcement, why the field is having a moment across the political spectrum, and his work with Public Justice and the American Antitrust Institute.

Ray's Hot Takes | Volume 3

Episode 36 of Raising the Bar with RebuttalPR takes on AI search — and the vendors selling rankings that don't exist. RebuttalPR founder Ray DeLorenzi joins host Hannah Gallagher to break down what actually drives visibility in tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, which AI model he prefers and why, and how plaintiff firms are already thinking about AI accountability through litigation. The second half gets practical: what to do after your first media hit, why "billion dollars recovered" isn't the homepage stat you think it is, and how to write a lawyer bio that doesn't sound like everyone else's. Want to learn more about Ray and the RebuttalPR team? Visit www.rebuttalpr.com [https://www.rebuttalpr.com/]

Richard Ruohonen on Winning Trials, the Olympics, and Speaking Out When It Matters

In this episode of Raising the Bar with RebuttalPR, host Ray DeLorenzi sits down with Rich Ruohonen, a partner at TSR Injury Law in Bloomington, Minnesota, whose career spans nearly three decades of plaintiff’s work in traumatic brain injury, car accidents, product liability, and premises liability cases. The conversation digs deep into what Rich calls the parallels between being a competitive athlete and being a trial lawyer — from his firm’s “Fight Club” practice sessions for opening statements, to the sports psychology principles he applies in the courtroom, to the mental resilience required to push through week-long trials on four hours of sleep. Rich has tried roughly 90 cases and has not lost one since around 2011 or 2012, a streak that now stands at 27 consecutive wins heading into 2026. Rich also shares the story behind his Olympic journey — eight failed bids before coming out of retirement at 55 to help a younger team through injuries, winning the Olympic trials, and then traveling to Milan–Cortina as the oldest American Winter Olympian in history, breaking a 94-year-old record. He describes what it felt like to finally stand in that arena with his family watching, and why the experience was the greatest moment of his life. The episode closes with Rich’s account of speaking out at his Olympic press conference about ICE operations in Minnesota — a decision he made deliberately, knowing there would be death threats and backlash from the administration. He explains why he believes lawyers have an obligation to speak when the rule of law is being violated, and why free speech isn’t free if it stays in the locker room.

Rachel McCarthy on Nonprofit Plaintiff Funding, Industry Reform, and the Fight for Access to Justice

In this episode of Raising the Bar with RebuttalPR, host Ray DeLorenzi sits down with Rachel McCarthy, Executive Director of The Milestone Foundation, a Buffalo-based nonprofit that provides pre- and post-settlement funding to plaintiffs at rates designed to help rather than exploit.  Rachel shares how a Jesuit education, an AmeriCorps stint in Buffalo, years as a paralegal in New York City, and a detour through the San Francisco tech world eventually led her to John Bair and the founding of what would become The Milestone Foundation. She describes being there at the very beginning, when the organization was little more than a board and an idea, and what it meant to watch it grow into a team serving over 1,000 plaintiffs and working with over 320 law firms nationwide.  The conversation covers what separates consumer litigation funding from commercial litigation funding and why so many trial lawyers have a hard-line opposition to the practice. Rachel explains how the foundation’s nonprofit model keeps money in the mission and out of anyone’s pocket, and why attorneys who are skeptical of funding companies often come around once they understand what The Milestone Foundation is actually doing.  Rachel also takes stock of the regulatory moment the industry finds itself in, including New York’s Consumer Litigation Funding Act going into effect this June, and where she sees the biggest gaps still left unaddressed. She closes with the story of a veteran turned quadriplegic who used The Milestone Foundation’s funding to adapt his home to his disability, and a call to the trial lawyer community to support the foundation as it heads into its 10th anniversary year.  Learn more about The Milestone Foundation here:  https://www.milestonefoundation.org [https://www.milestonefoundation.org/]