Super Lawyers - Illinois 2012

monitoring started, you had a real concrete
indication of a child’s status [throughout
the birth process]. Bruce was just starting
in the early days of fetal monitoring, and he
was a natural for trial work in this area.”
While in law school, Pfaff married a
fashion designer named Deborah Leydig,
who became a stage actress for 20 years.
“We were very sorry when his wife informed
him that she missed her family and wanted
to move back to Chicago,” says Bostwick.
“Bruce was an extraordinary lawyer from
the start.” Pfaff soon established himself
as an innovative trial lawyer at Corboy
& Demetrio, and was among the first to
pursue cerebral palsy cases with fetal
monitoring evidence in Chicago. He was
also one of the lead attorneys in the Tylenol
products liability cases, which were settled
in the plaintiffs’ favor though the products
were tampered with by a still-unknown
third party, and led to a new standard of
pharmaceutical packaging.

While at Corboy, Pfaff says, attorneys were often responsible for working on 100 cases per year. And Philip Corboy insisted that employees clear their desks at the end of the day, no exceptions. Pfaff learned to keep his space neat, a habit he follows to this day, significantly aided by the technology he uses to prepare and try cases.

Unlike many litigators’ offices, piled high with paper and bulging binders, Pfaff’s corner office contains little evidence of ongoing cases. All documents and other evidence, he says, are on the firm’s computers, accessible immediately on two large monitors behind his desk.

Pfaff was an early adopter of both
case-management software and trial
technology such as video impeachment.
When he started his own firm, he
immediately began creating what he
has sometimes called “fun and games”
for juries. “Juries are the most important
people in the room, and I want to give
them the tools to decide the case in my
client’s favor,” says Pfaff. “Once a jury sees
something, they learn from you. You need
to explain the basics: [For example], how
could this machine have been designed
differently to not hurt Dustin? Doing as
much visually as possible is key.”
In the case of the roof glider accident,
Pfaff passed around a replica of Stone’s
prosthetic leg so that jurors could feel
its full weight and get a sense of how
cumbersome it would be for a young man
in his 20s.