Page 4 - Matthew McNicholas

AT A GLANCE
McNicholas &
McNicholas LLP
10866 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1400 Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 474-1582 www.mcnicholaslaw.com
Practice Areas
Catastrophic Injury Wrongful Death Employment Law
Maritime Law Landlord-Tenant Habitability Product Liability
Sexual Assault Civil Rights
Education
Juris Doctor, Loyola Law School Bachelor of Arts with Honors, University
of California at Los Angeles Loyola High School
Honors
Best Lawyers in America Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in
America
Daily Journal Top 100 Lawyers
Daily Journal 20 Under 40
The National Trial Lawyers Top 100 Southern California Super Lawyers Southern California Super Lawyers Top
100
Professional Memberships
American College Trial Lawyers, Fellow American Board of Trial Advocates American Association for Justice at Loyola
Law School, Leaders Forum Member Consumer Attorneys Association of Los
Angeles
Consumer Attorneys of California
Community Involvement
Urban Compass
Serra Project
Library Foundation of Los Angeles AbilityFirst
Hobbies
Family Time Traveling Reading
Family
Wife
Three children
13 Nieces and Nephews
ing these on top of each other. Finally, they add the tread piece and the sidewall, and essentially place it all in a huge ‘donut cooker.’ This is called curing, and it goes to a high temperature so that all the lay- ers and compounds bond together.
“From time to time, there are prob- lems,” he continues. “These can lead to tire failure. Sometimes there can be wear and tear issues that cannot be seen by retailers. We had a retailer we believed should have taken the tire out of service but didn’t do so.”
One area of the law in which McNicho- las is heavily involved is law enforcement employment and whistleblower cases. “The subject matter is always interesting,” he says. “You’re often dealing with inside baseball stuff.”
As panel counsel with the Los Angeles Police Protective League and the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, McNich- olas speaks to and represents police offi- cers and firefighters for the two depart- ments. He has recovered more than $50 million on their behalf in cases involving racial and sexual harassment, discrimi- nation and retaliation, and wrongful ter- mination.
“While I have had many thought- provoking trials in my career, the most interesting trial I’ve had to date was the Nagatoshi trial,” McNicholas says. “It was my first LAPD trial. I represented a ca- nine handler who was discriminated and retaliated against because of his race. It was the first time I got a real peek behind the LAPD curtain. Ever since, it’s been like Alice in Wonderland — I fell down the rabbit hole of the internal workings
and mechanisms of the LAPD, which continue to reveal themselves with each subsequent case up to today.”
While he takes his work as a lawyer very seriously, at heart, McNicholas is a family man, and when he’s not in the courtroom or preparing for a trial, he spends time with his wife and three chil- dren as well as his large, extended family.
“Lawyer, husband, father, those are my three jobs,” he says. “Because of the nature of my work, it’s almost impossible to plan vacations, or at least to plan vacations around me. I think in order to do that, we’d have to plan two years in advance; there are too many trials to prepare for and the dates are always juggled around. My work is high-octane, high-end litiga- tion which is very demanding on time and results. But my wife was once a part of it herself when she practiced law at Quinn Emanuel, so it’s never really been an issue at home.”
In fact, McNicholas met his wife in their first year of law school, and they married 11 years to the day after their first date. She had her own thriving prac- tice, which she left in order to raise the couple’s three children.
When it comes to whether cases should or should not be tried, McNicholas says, “The types of trials I’m involved in can take a huge emotional toll on the people involved. So, I tell my clients that trials are like chemotherapy — you do it be- cause you have to, not because you want to. And you hope your life is better on the other side.”
Hugh Williams Photography