Profile: Alexandra Hamilton

Success, recognition at well-known plaintiffs’ firms leads her to establish her own

2024 August

For someone who has been practicing law for a relatively short time, Alexandra “Lex” Hamilton has covered a lot of ground in the plaintiffs’ law community, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that she just recently added firm founder and owner to her resume.

Over the past 13 years, Hamilton has worked with three prominent plaintiffs’ firms in the Bay Area and gained experience with mass torts, all manner of personal-injury and products-liability cases, as well as other complex litigation.

In March, she decided to launch the Hamilton Law Firm, based in San Francisco.

“It seemed like a good time to make that change and transition,” she said. “I had already gotten a lot of that experience when I was at Fiore Achermann, being a partner there and having employees. So, it wasn’t as difficult as it would have been if I had gone from being a W-2 employee to all of a sudden starting my own firm, especially in this crazy world of plaintiffs’ firms and contingency fees.”

While it may not be strange to leave one large, prestigious firm like Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy for another, it’s perhaps a bit odder to depart from a second successful stint at one of the most respected plaintiff firms in the state – The Veen Firm. But Hamilton went through with the latter and landed a partnership with a groundbreaking, women-owned firm in Fiore Achermann, where she stayed for more than four years before making a go of it on her own.

“What was fantastic about that (Fiore Achermann partnership) is I learned a lot of how to run a firm and how to build the business side of a law firm as well as the practice,” she added. “I really got different things from each of (those) firms that helped shape me and gave me the confidence and skills to go out on my own.”

Toss in her law school clerkships with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and two private firms – not to mention her internship with the Solicitor General’s Office – and Hamilton has compiled a wealth of experience not many can boast before reaching age 40.

She’s also collected more than her share of honors in her short time on the plaintiffs’ bar, including landing on rankings lists for America’s Top 100 Personal Injury Attorneys, Northern California in 2019, National Academy of Personal Injury Attorneys Top 10 Under 40 in 2015 and Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40 in 2014.

The organizations that distribute such honors have been a significant and important part of Hamilton’s career, she said, as are such groups outside of work. She serves on the board of the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association, the Consumer Attorneys of California and the San Mateo County Trial Lawyers Association, for which she is set to be president soon.

Hamilton also has worked with children who have autism as well as underprivileged kids. But perhaps her favorite pastime is her involvement with the arts. “I’m on the board of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and have been for the last nine years,” she said. “That’s something I’m really passionate about. That organization is all about making art, specifically Shakespeare.”

Dual citizen

Hamilton was born in France and raised in the Bay Area. Her father worked for Hewlett Packard and his job took him to different places. He was based in the city of Lyon at the time of Hamilton’s birth.

“My parents were British, but my mom, she was born in India and kind of moved all around and spent a lot of her formative years in Kenya before moving to London when she was in her 20s,” Hamilton said. “And then my dad grew up in England and had a much more typical English lifestyle.

“They jumped around a little bit wherever his job was before and after they got married,” she continued. “And that’s kind of how they ended up in the Bay Area – because of Hewlett Packard.”

Meanwhile, Hamilton’s mom did secretarial work at various companies and institutions, including the European Space Department and a law firm in San Francisco. After Hamilton was born, her mother became a stay-at-home parent.

“I think she was always frustrated that she wasn’t given the options, you know, to kind of have a more fulfilling career,” Hamilton said of her mother. “Not that that’s not fulfilling. But she was always told she could only be a secretary, essentially.”

Hamilton had no direct family or friends in law, so she believes she may have been drawn to the profession after having been told by “frustrated” parents how good the young Hamilton was at arguing and telling her she would make a good lawyer. But mainly, she observed at a fairly young age that lawyers – or people with law degrees – could help others in need through a variety of ways, and thus it became her goal to go to law school and get that degree.

Before attending Santa Clara University Law School, Hamilton earned her bachelor’s degree in political science, with a concentration on international studies. She also studied at University of California Center in Washington, D.C., and Paris at the time.

In her early years at law school, plaintiffs’ law was not part of her plans. “I was going to be in international law when I first went to law school,” she recalled. “I come from a family that has lived all over the world, so I really thought with international law, I could have a more global practice. While I was in law school, I kind of shifted toward more plaintiffs’ law.”

New plans

Indeed, Hamilton landed a clerkship first with a plaintiffs’ firm in San Jose, then with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, where she worked on cases against PG&E. Learning about different areas and different industries and helping people was a large component of her development.

Once she graduated from law school and passed the bar, she was hired on at CPM, spending the vast majority of her time on the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. She worked alongside Frank Pitre, digging into the history of PG&E, learning about all the facets of the utility, including management and maintenance, testing both electrical and gas lines and other general aspects of its operations.

She also got an opportunity to work on the Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco International Airport.

“I was really appreciative of all the opportunities that Frank Pitre offered and really trusted me to do,” Hamilton said. “I did a lot of digging, a lot of prep in different ways, including helping with deposition prep and motion for summary judgment … There were a lot of hands on both of those cases. And I had a big role for my years of experience.”

It was fascinating work, no doubt, Hamilton said, but after nearly four years at CPM, she decided it was time to move on. She landed a position at another top plaintiffs’ firm in California, the Veen Firm.

“I was ready for a change, but one thing that really drew me to the Veen Firm was that it was a lot of single-plaintiff cases, catastrophic injuries,” she said. “At CPM, I was doing a lot more mass torts. It’s a very different way of practicing, and your relationship with the plaintiffs is different. I really wanted to work on more individualized cases.”

Hamilton wasn’t able to single out any one or two cases that were more memorable than others, though she did recall one proceeding she had while working at the Veen firm in which her client was severely injured in a chemical explosion and suffered severe injuries. While it was an interesting case and the facts and the client were wonderful, she said, there was a moment during a motion for summary judgment in which the judge made a point of pausing to observe something quite remarkable happening in the courtroom, something that may have been unprecedented at the time.

“She made a comment that the entire courtroom was women,” Hamilton recalled. “The bailiff, the clerk, all three parties were represented by women. She was a woman. The court reporter was a woman. And she took a moment to just kind of highlight how unusual and special that was.”

After nearly five years with Veen, Hamiton moved on to a smaller firm in Fiore Achermann, where she had the chance to expand her trial practice and use her broad experience to become a manager, leader and partner. But even with more responsibility and more of a stake, it didn’t seem to be enough. So, opening her own firm was the logical next step.

In March 2024, the Hamilton Law Firm was born, only a short time after Hamilton herself had given birth. She admitted it was stressful and a bit scary. “I was two months postpartum with my second child,” she said, adding that it’s a fledgling firm with a lot of room and time to get bigger. “I want to be strategic and methodical about growth. So, right now it’s just really about making sure I have a firm foundation and then seeing where it makes the most sense, for my cases, in terms of growing.”

“Inspiration”

Growth also is what Hamilton monitors when she’s not working. Outside of the office and courtroom, she loves hanging out with her two children, ages three and eight months, and watching them get bigger.

Her three-year-old daughter is obsessed with the concept of work, Hamilton said.

“She gets very sad when she can’t go with me to work, you know, which is very sweet because she doesn’t understand what it means to use a computer,” she said. “They’re such an inspiration.”

Hamilton also loves to read and hang out with friends. And one of her favorite pastimes is taking urban hikes all over San Francisco.

“There’s so many wonderful places, all these little hidden mystery spots, hidden spaces that you kind of don’t even realize are there until you can slow down and walk past them or around them.”

Hamilton’s advice to younger lawyers or law students is to talk with others in the profession, work with them, collaborate on cases and just contribute to the profession any way you can. Some people might call it networking. She used the term “relationships.”

“One thing that I’ve gotten the most out of is just being involved in the community,” she said. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and there’s so many people who have had amazing experiences and great verdicts and are a great inspiration. So, just getting to know everyone and using those tools. But also collaborating and contributing to the community and other people’s successes. I really do believe that the more we all help on the plaintiffs’ side, the better our clients are in position to win their cases.”

REDIRECT:

Getaway Spot: Paris

Go-To Music or Artist: Changes with my mood but, naturally, the “Hamilton” soundtrack is a top contender.

Recommended Reading: Candice Millard or Erik Larson

Dream Job: The one I have now.

Words to Live By: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Dr. Maya Angelou