Panelist Information

2025 Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Instructor

Erin Clifford, JD, MA, LPC, NBC-HWC

Managing Director, Clifford Law Offices
Founder, Erin Clifford Wellness

Erin Clifford is the Managing Director at Clifford Law Offices, Chicago’s premier personal injury law firm. She provides overall management of strategic business development, including planning, coordinating, and implementation of marketing and business plans. providing her with an understanding of the stressors that a high-demanding job entails. Erin is also a corporate wellness consultant who is deeply passionate about helping professionals create healthy lifestyles for a more fulfilling, happier existence. Corporations and law firms hire Erin to speak, train and coach their employees so they incorporate appropriate lifestyle changes that produce real and lasting results, yielding more productivity and positivity in the workplace. Born and raised in Chicago, Erin began her career teaching for Chicago Public Schools. She holds a Juris Doctor (JD) from DePaul College of Law and a master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling from Northwestern University. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Illinois, a National Certified Counselor, and certified as a holistic wellness coach through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. She also holds the highest credential in wellness coaching as a National Board-Certified Health & Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC). Her book, Wellness Reimagined: A Holistic Approach to Health, Happiness, and Harmony, published by Forefront Books releases in May 2025.

Robert A. Clifford

Founder and Senior Partner at Clifford Law Offices

Robert A. Clifford is the founder of Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, an internationally-recognized plaintiffs’ trial firm that concentrates in aviation, transportation, personal injury, medical negligence, product liability law, mass torts and class actions. Mr. Clifford is among only eight personal injury attorneys in the nation selected as one of America’s Top 200 Lawyers in Forbes’ inaugural list of 2024, and the only personal injury attorney selected from Illinois. The National Law Journal has awarded Mr. Clifford the Elite Trial Lawyers’ Award as well as its Lifetime Achievement Award. Mr. Clifford has the distinction of being selected by Super Lawyers, a peer-review organization, as the number one lawyer in Illinois from 2009-2016 and in 2023-2024 and has always been in the top three. He was named by Chicago Magazine as one of the 100 Most Powerful Chicagoans and was named the 2012 Chicago Lawyer Magazine’s Person of the Year, based upon his trial accomplishments, his contributions to the legal community and to the Chicago area. In 2022, Mr. Clifford was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by DePaul University College of Law, his alma mater, as well as the Trial Lawyer Excellence Award by the Jury Verdict Reporter. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals gave him its Professionalism Award in 2014. The Chicago Bar Association gave him the Justice John Paul Stevens Award in 2017, its highest honor. Also that year he received the Unity Award by the Diversity Scholarship Foundation. The National Trial Lawyers named Bob Clifford the Class Action Trial Lawyer of 2018, as well as one of America’s 52 Most Influential Trial Lawyers in 2022. He has been listed in Best Lawyers from its inception, decades ago, including being the top in the Chicago metropolitan area in certain practice areas. In 2019, the Illinois Trial Lawyers’ Association honored Mr. Clifford with the Leonard Ring Lifetime Achievement Award. He also was among those honored in 2019 by Public Justice’s Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. He has been top-listed in Best Lawyers, the oldest attorney peer-review ranking service in the country, for decades.

Mr. Clifford has represented those injured or killed in every major commercial airline crash in the U.S. in the last four decades. This includes the American Airlines crash at O’Hare in 1979; the United Airlines DC-10 crash in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989; the Comair runway crash in Lexington, Kentucky of 2006; the Continental Colgan crash of 2009; and, internationally, the Turkish Airlines crash in Amsterdam of 2009. He is currently Lead Counsel on behalf of families of the victims onboard the tragic Boeing crash of a 737 MAX-8 in Ethiopia in 2019. Mr. Clifford served as the liaison counsel for the subrogation and business property damage claims that resulted from the tragic September 11, 2001 crashes at the World Trade Center in New York. He served as lead counsel in the negotiation and settlement of those claims that settled for $1.2 billion. Mr. Clifford’s trial career has been marked by many record verdicts including a young woman who suffered permanent injuries after being dragged by a semi. The jury returned a record $35 million verdict for the young woman.

In addition to practicing law, Mr. Clifford is dedicated to the furtherance of the legal profession and has been actively involved and held leadership roles with the American Bar Association (Chair of the Section of Litigation and Chair of the ABA’s charitable arm, the Fund for Justice and Education), Chicago Bar Association (President), Chicago Inn of Court (President), American College of Trial Lawyers and Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (President). He is also a member of the American Law Institute and the Inner Circle of Advocates. For more than 30 years, he has sponsored the Annual Clifford Tort Symposium on Tort Law and Civil Justice at DePaul University College of Law that brings together the best and brightest on a topic of interest to the public and that results in a special law review issue of articles by the academic and judicial participants. For over 18 years, his firm has offered an annual free Continuing Legal Education program, gathering over 3,500 attendees each year. Mr. Clifford also served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Naples Children & Education Foundation, a charitable organization and host of the Naples Winter Wine Festival, which benefits more than 200,000 at-risk and underprivileged children in Southwest Florida.