Lara Merrigan has significant experience in representing injured workers under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act and its extensions, including the Defense Base Act. Since 2007, approximately 90% of her practice has arisen under these Acts. She has handled hundreds of cases and advocated at every level from the initial claim filing at the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs through the United States Supreme Court. She has first-chaired multiple trials and taken hundreds of depositions. She is a published author on these areas of law and a frequent speaker at national conventions.
Ms. Merrigan’s practice is international. She frequently represents claimants injured at the ports and shipyards of her home state of California, and she has handled claims arising on each of the seven continents and on the high seas.
For the first eight years of her career, she worked on the defense side, representing employers, carriers, and shipowners. Along the way, she gained a deep understanding of how Longshore Act claims are defended and investigated, as well as unique insight into how employers and their insurers value settlements.
In 2015, Ms. Merrigan started her own firm to represent injured workers. Since then, she has secured benefits for many claimants in often difficult cases. Many of her cases involve stepping in at the appellate level and convincing the court to reverse a denial of benefits.
Ms. Merrigan is a trained mediator, having completed a 40-hour mediation course at Harvard Law School’s Executive Education Course Program on Negotiation. She has mediated cases both as a defense attorney and a claimants’ lawyer, so she is familiar with how the process generally plays out for both sides.
Martindale-Hubbell awarded Ms. Merrigan its AV Preeminent® rating, which Martindale-Hubbell explains is: “The highest peer rating standard. This rating signifies that a large number of the lawyer’s peers rank him or her at the highest level of professional excellence for their legal knowledge, communication skills and ethical standards.” Martindale-Hubbell has provided the public with information on attorneys since 1868. Further evidence of Ms. Merrigan’s reputation in the Longshore Act community is her large number of speaking engagements and that many other attorneys seek her out to handle their cases on appeal. She is also the co-chair of the Workers’ Injury Law and Advocacy Group’s Longshore Act section. She is also a co-chair of the DOL-Joint Bar association. She serves on the Department of Labor’s West Coast Longshore Act Symposium steering committee and its East Coast Defense Base Act Symposium steering committee.
In law school, Ms. Merrigan’s focus was on litigation and advocacy. She completed multiple non-required courses both during and after law school that taught techniques for trials and depositions. She maintained a rank among the top ten students in her law school class for her entire tenure, graduating in the top 5%. She was a proud recipient of the Arthur C. Zief, Jr., scholarship, as well as financial grants for her work on the Maritime Law Journal and as a school-appointed tutor to assist other students. She interned for Justice Joyce Kennard of the California Supreme Court, the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, the San Francisco Mayor, and a United States Senator. Prior to law school, she taught skiing and snowboarding for several years.
