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Joe Jamail, who landed an 11 billion dollar verdict for Penzoil against Texaco, has an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion, and was number 378 on the Forbes list. So now I have heard of a billionaire lawyer (but only one).
Susan777, perhaps you wouldn't call John Edwards "legendary," but I'm not alone in doing so. Here's a quote from the Washington Monthly:
"Until he moved to the Senate, Edwards was a personal injury lawyer---the kind people most love to hate---and a very talented one. More than half his cases were medical malpractice suits. Many involved infants born with brain damage or other serious conditions that entail a lifetime of expensive medical care. Edwards also won cases against hospitals, cities, and corporations. "As a lawyer, he was the whole package," says Mike Dayton, editor of North Carolina Lawyers Weekly. "He's prepared, he's smart, and he's very personable." And he continued winning massive verdicts. In 1990, he was the youngest member inducted into The Inner Circle of Advocates, an invitation-only group of the nation's top 100 trial lawyers. By the mid-1990s, Edwards had become legendary. "After trials," recalls Howard Twiggs, a Raleigh lawyer and former president of ATLA, "jurors would approach Johnny and ask him for his card." It is said that insurance companies would suddenly become interested in settling when Edwards' name was added to a plaintiff's team. Edwards won a $7 million verdict for the parents of a 16-year-old who'd killed himself the day after being dismissed from a psychiatric hospital, an incredibly difficult case to win, Dayton says, because in North Carolina the plaintiff must prove that the entire burden of negligence lies with the defendant. In 1997, Edwards successfully sued a doctor for $23 million on behalf of the parents of a baby severely brain damaged by oxygen deprivation during labor."
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