Lieff Cabraser Partner Jonathan Selbin Profiled in Modern Counsel

Modern Counsel has profiled Lieff Cabraser partner Jonathan D. Selbin in a piece entitled, “Jonathan Selbin Levels the Playing Field.” The profile highlights Jonathan’s long legacy of fighting for equal rights, a legacy he says was passed down from his parents who engaged heavily in civil rights work in the 1950’s and 1960’s and in Vietnam War protests in the 1960’s and 1970’s. As Jonathan explains, it was their activism that instilled in him the idea that staying neutral was tantamount to siding with the oppressors.

At Lieff Cabraser, Jonathan has spent a quarter century fighting for victims of misconduct through high-profile class-action lawsuits, like the massive gender bias suit he lead against Home Depot, where a class of nearly 25,000 female employees accused the retail giant of creating and maintaining a gender-based glass barrier to receiving promotions and higher pay. The settlement of the suit resulted in sweeping changes in the company’s hiring and promotion practices, leading Jonathan to credit the company for how quickly they changed course. “They wholeheartedly embraced the changes we wanted them to make in their hiring and promotion practices,” he said. “They realized they’d be a better and stronger company if they valued women and men equally.”

Jonathan and his family are also doing their part to carry on the tradition laid down by his parents, after deciding that working to ensure voting rights in areas widely known for discriminating against minority voters would be a way to create real foundational change. This lead to their partnership with nonprofit Equal Justice Works to create the Selbin Voting Rights Fellowship which offers an opportunity for a new lawyer to work for voting rights on behalf of citizens who often face hurdles in trying to secure voting access.

“The hope is that more people will have access to exercise their right to vote, and when more people have and can exercise that right, the outcomes are better” said Selbin.

“We’re not under any illusions this one person is going to change the world, but they will make a difference.”

Read Jonathan’s full profile on Modern Counsel’s site.

About Jonathan D. Selbin

Jonathan Selbin is a senior partner in Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP’s New York office. He chairs the firm’s Economic Injury Product Defect Practice Group, and is a long-time member of the firm’s Executive Committee.

Jonathan litigates consumer protection and defective products class action lawsuits against many of the nation’s most prominent corporations, and has been appointed by courts around the country to lead such litigation on behalf of consumers. He has argued and obtained favorable appellate opinions in multiple Courts of Appeal, including in the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Circuits. His work on behalf of consumers was featured in a September 2014 Forbes article and a March 2016 National Law Journal article.

Together, cases in which Jonathan has played a lead role have resulted in court-approved class action settlements with combined total payouts to class members exceeding $3.25 billion in cash, plus other relief, such as extended and enhanced warranties.

Jonathan is a 1993 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, and clerked for Honorable Marilyn Hall Patel in the Northern District of California from 1993-1995.

In 2017, Jonathan and his family founded the Selbin Voting Rights Fellowship at Equal Justice Works, funding a rolling two-year fellow working to ensure fair access to voting in at-risk communities.