James A Pardo

Practice Areas

James (Jim) A. Pardo has more than twenty years of trial and litigation experience representing clients in complex commercial, mass tort, product liability and class action cases.

Jim’s clients include many of the country’s foremost oil and gas, insurance, healthcare and technology companies. He has represented these clients in various state and federal trial and appellate courts across the United States, as well as in actions, investigations and enforcement proceedings brought by the US Department of Justice, US Environmental Protection Agency, and other state and federal authorities. An accomplished courtroom lawyer and appellate advocate, Jim’s litigation and trial skills have resulted in a long track record of victories across a diverse range of disputes, including defective fuel products, breach of contract, biotech research fraud, personal injury, patent infringement, groundwater contamination and renewable fuels issues. Many of Jim’s cases have been widely covered in the media.

Jim has particular knowledge in the energy industry, having represented major oil companies, natural gas developers, renewable fuel manufacturers, and oil field service providers in all of the aforementioned subject areas. For more than a decade, Jim has served as defense liaison counsel and as national coordinating counsel to the petroleum industry in the In re: Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether Product Liability multi-district litigation, one of the largest and most complex mass tort product liability dockets in the country. Jim also is recognized as one of the nation’s foremost advisors on the legal issues associated with hydraulic fracturing. He is a frequent lecturer on fracking topics and has authored, contributed to or been quoted in more than 100 articles on fracking issues for such publications as Time, The Wall Street Journal, Platt’s, Reuters, and the Oil & Gas Journal.

Jim also serves as deputy general counsel to McDermott Will & Emery LLP, representing the Firm and its personnel in a variety of internal and external matters, and overseeing many of the Firm’s risk-management and risk-prevention initiatives. He is a member of the Firm’s Loss Prevention, Integrity & Compliance, New Business, and Associate Review committees.