EVER SINCE HIS FIRST insurance bad faith verdict in 1971, William M. Shernoff, senior and managing partner of the firm, has devoted his career to fighting insurance company abuse.

Mr. Shernoff's career has been distinguished by multi-million dollar verdicts and precedent-setting case law. He is credited with pioneering bad faith insurance law with his 1979 victory, Egan v. Mutual of Omaha.

His numerous landmark cases include a settlement on behalf of the MGM Grand Hotel over insurance claims arising from a devastating fire at the hotel and a jury verdict amounting to over $100 million for the American Samoa Government for claims stemming from a hurricane.

Flexing his international reputation for remaining undaunted against the world's mightiest insurers, Mr. Shernoff recently took on Holocaust-era life insurance litigation against Europe's major insurance companies. With precedent-setting victories on behalf of dozens of victims, he and co-counsel Lisa Stern comprised the first legal team ever to successfully handle such claims. For their efforts, they were bestowed 2002 Trial Lawyers of the Year by the California Consumer Attorneys Association.

A tireless consumer advocate, Mr. Shernoff has authored three books for the general public: Payment Refused, How to Make Insurance Companies Pay Your Claims and Fight Back and Win - How to Get Your HMO and Health Insurance to Pay Up. He is also co-author, with Harvey Levine, of the legal textbook Insurance Bad Faith Litigation, the definitive treatise in the field.

Mr. Shernoff has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America every year since its first edition in 1983 and was recently named a Super Lawyer of 2004 by Law & Politics Magazine and Los Angeles Magazine. He has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall St. Journal, and Time Magazine and has appeared on the television program "60 Minutes."

Mr. Shernoff co-founded the National Insurance Consumer Organization (NICO) and established a consumer law program (one of the first of its kind in the country) at the University of Wisconsin.

A native of Wisconsin, Mr. Shernoff received his B.B.A. from the University of Miami in 1959 and his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1962.