Class Certification

We have been at the forefront of defining the “rigorous analysis” newly required for class certification. Our team includes award-winning authors on this subject who have examined the evolution of legal standards and their implications for economic and statistical analysis. Our experts have testified in many of the last decade’s most high-profile class certification disputes including alleged antitrust violations, denial of services, product misrepresentation, fraud on the market, interference with competitor market entry, violation of fiduciary relationships, discriminatory lending practices, and environmental damages. We assist both plaintiffs and defendants, and amass sound empirical evidence on common impact, individual issues, representativeness, and damages.

Our experts embrace the deeply probing merits analysis now frequently demanded at the certification stage. We welcome the opportunity to engage early and assist our clients—whether on the plaintiffs’ or defendants’ side—in assuring that discovery gets them what they will need for the balance of the case. Development and management of large data sets is at the core of our expertise. Refined statistical analysis enables us to prove early on whether class-wide damage methodologies actually work (as opposed to being theoretically “workable”) and to identify and respond to individual differences among proposed class members. Helping the Court understand which of these differences have significance for certification, and which can be controlled for or disregarded, is a key part of our mission.