Nicole Smith on the Business of Mass Torts and the Case Against Early Vetting

In this episode of Raising the Bar with RebuttalPR, host Ray DeLorenzi sits down with Nicole Smith, a partner at Langdon & Emison in Kansas City, Missouri. Nicole started at the firm as a law clerk during law school and has built a career spanning single-event litigation, mass tort leadership, and the operational side of running that work like a business.

Nicole traces her interest in the law back to a sixth-grade mock trial of the Lindbergh kidnapping and shares a winding route to the profession that ran through architecture, journalism, and a stint as a teaching major before a legal assistant job at a mass torts firm pulled her toward plaintiff’s work. The conversation digs into the business of mass torts, and Nicole explains how she works through revenue projections and case selection and the thinking behind her article questioning early vetting and census rules. She also talks about mentoring younger lawyers, her Society of Women Trial Lawyers talk on work-life balance and “mom guilt,” and the advice she wishes she’d had starting out.

Read Nicole's piece on mandatory early vetting: https://irlaw.umkc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=lawreview

Learn more about Langdon & Emison: https://www.langdonemison.com/