How Working Together Can Strengthen the Legal Profession
Conversations between lawyers often focus on referrals. When a client or prospective client has a problem outside an attorney’s practice area, the lawyer frequently rushes to identify a colleague with more targeted experience. While knowing your limitations is important, reflexively “handing off” a case can lead you to miss valuable opportunities to improve your skills and expand your practice. Instead of viewing unfamiliar legal terrain as a reason to step back, attorneys should consider it an invitation to collaborate.
When you encounter a client with legal concerns extending beyond your expertise, consider partnering with attorneys who have complementary skills. A collaborative approach can allow you to draw on each attorney’s areas of expertise, experience, and resources. Working together can allow you to build stronger, more persuasive cases.
In addition to providing better results for individual clients, collaboration can reshape how the legal system addresses systemic injustices. It can open up multi-pronged options for pursuing justice that any single practice area can’t capture.
Our Experience: Learning Through Collaboration
Megan Bonanni, an equity partner at Pitt McGehee Palmer Bonanni & Rivers, and Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller, a senior shareholder at Sommers Schwartz, have collaborated on sexual assault cases spanning seven states and hundreds of clients.
Their partnership began when they recognized that complex cases, particularly sexual assault matters, require a synthesis of several areas of expertise. The attorneys work together to develop and pursue a comprehensive vision of justice.
- Bonanni provides expertise and experience in pursuing employment discrimination and civil rights claims. She is especially adept at exploring sexual assault litigation claims from these perspectives, such as asserting bodily integrity claims under the Michigan Constitution.
- Esser-Weidenfeller’s mass tort and medical malpractice experience provides deep knowledge of the scope of medical practice standards, what should and shouldn’t happen during medical appointments, and access to a robust network of medical experts who can address both physical injuries and lifelong emotional trauma.
When these attorneys work together on complex cases, they approach the same facts through different lenses. For example, in a medical malpractice claim, Esser-Weidenfeller may examine the extent of the patient’s injuries and investigate facts supporting a claim of medical negligence. Bonanni may focus on institutional policies and practices, exploring systemic failures and whether an entity failed to properly control its employees within the scope of their employment.
Through meaningful collaboration, the two attorneys identify causes of action neither would have pursued alone or on the same scale. They create comprehensive case theories that address both individual harm and systemic accountability. Together, they can scale these cases into multi-million-dollar cases, delivering meaningful justice for their clients and demanding long-term institutional change.
How Collaboration Leads To Stronger Cases and Better Outcomes for Our Clients
When taking on powerful institutions with vast resources, collaboration provides better – and more — firepower. Most plaintiffs’ attorneys work alone or in small groups, while defense firms are often large and well-funded. Partnering with other firms can help plaintiffs’ attorneys level the playing field, increasing their monetary resources and expertise.
This approach enhances rather than diminishes a case’s value. Clients benefit immensely from having attorneys who understand trauma through different professional frameworks. Each can provide unique perspectives on which experts to involve in a case and arrange access to additional resources.
This cross-pollination has influenced legal scholarship with the objective of creating institutional change. Bonnani and Esser-Weidenfeller collaborated with trauma-informed experts at Boston College to conceive and facilitate forensic evaluations of their clients. This resulted in three published articles in top-tier medical journals on male trauma response, which in turn prompted reforms in how clinicians assess and treat male survivors of sexual assault.
How Collaboration Strengthens the Legal Profession
The legal practice can be isolating and heavy, especially for attorneys who regularly work on deeply emotional topics like harassment, sexual assault, and medical negligence. Collaboration allows attorneys to share that burden, reducing its harmful impact on their mental and physical health. This can help them work more creatively and productively and improve their overall enjoyment of the work they do.
When attorneys from different specialties work together, they learn about each other’s worlds, which often enhances their individual practices. Bonanni and Esser-Weidenfeller say that each case they work on together teaches them something new about applying constitutional theories, medical standards, or institutional liability.
The legal profession grows stronger when attorneys embrace collaboration rather than fearing it. Next time you don’t have all the tools to address a potential matter, don’t run from the case. Instead, reach out to someone with complementary knowledge. This
approach doesn’t just help individual clients—it has the potential to change how the legal system addresses systemic problems. It may even bring joy back to your practice!
Many legal cases involve complex challenges that don’t neatly fit into a single practice area. By embracing collaboration, attorneys can build stronger cases, achieve better outcomes, and participate in processes that deliver justice more effectively for clients.
Need Legal Help? Contact Sommers Schwartz, P.C.
Sommers Schwartz, P.C., represents clients in a wide range of litigation, including sexual assault and abuse cases. Over the past four decades, we have recovered more than $1 billion for our clients. To set up a free, confidential, no-obligation consultation, contact our office today.
