Feldman Shepherd Partner Patricia M. Giordano Installed as President of New Jersey Association for Justice

Feldman Shepherd is pleased to announce that partner Patricia M. Giordano was installed on June 22, 2023, as President of the New Jersey Association for Justice (NJAJ) for the 2023 through 2024 term.

Speaking at the installation dinner to about 300 people, Giordano, in addition to thanking her family, friends, NJAJ members and professional colleagues, drew from her personal experience of having a severely handicapped sister who was injured at birth to stress the important role that trial lawyers play in speaking for those who either have no voice or have been denied one. “Her entire life, someone had to speak for her. At first, it was my parents, and then after my dad died, my mother, and not long after that, I too took on the role of her advocate,” Giordano said. “This is what trial lawyers do every day — we advocate. We speak for those who can’t speak for themselves. We tend to those who need our help,” Giordano said.

Giordano is the sixth female President of NJAJ since it was founded in the late 1940s. She emphasized that in addition to supporting clients, attorneys should uplift their professional colleagues who are “not yet in positions of power”; promote diversity, fairness and inclusion in the legal profession; and make all attorneys feel like they belong. “All I’m asking is that we not only welcome people of all stripes to the party, but we ask them to dance as well,” Giordano said, paraphrasing an oft-quoted expression applicable to DEI efforts.

NJAJ is a statewide association of over 2,600 members in private practice and public service, including attorneys, paralegals, law clerks, law students and law school graduates not yet admitted to the bar. NJAJ is dedicated to protecting New Jersey’s families by working to preserve and strengthen the laws for safer products and workplaces, a cleaner environment and quality healthcare.

Since 2010, Giordano has served in a number of executive leadership positions at NJAJ including as President-Elect and 1st Vice President. She has co-chaired NJAJ’s annual Boardwalk Seminar® and is a frequent lecturer at its Boardwalk and Meadowlands CLE programs. She presently serves as co-chair of NJAJ’s Medical Malpractice Committee and is also a co-chair of its Women Trial Lawyers Caucus, and is a member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, among other posts. In 2018, Giordano was appointed by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner as the NJAJ representative to the New Jersey Supreme Court Women in the Courts Committee, which is now known as the New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on Gender in the Courts.

At Feldman Shepherd, Giordano’s practice focuses on birth and neonatal injury and medical malpractice cases.

“Our firm is so very proud of Trish. She is a smart, strategic trial lawyer whose work has always been governed by compassion and empathy. We are happy to share her considerable talents for the benefit of the citizens of New Jersey and the New Jersey trial lawyer community,” said Feldman Shepherd partner John M. Dodig.