A new litigation boutique has entered the scene, with a focus on automotive and complex civil disputes.
Attorneys Sabrina Narain and Amy Maclear have combined to form Narain Maclear, which is based downtown. The firm also launched with a secondary outpost in Irvine.
With the new firm, the pair will take on defense duties for automakers and other facets of the transportation industry, particularly those targeted by massive class action legal cases by plaintiffs’ firm giants. Narain said these sorts of cases have exploded in California throughout the past decade.
“These consumer warranty lawsuits are spearheaded by certain large plaintiffs’ firms that have pushed the consumer market through advertising into filing lawsuits,” she said. “The motive is driven by these lawsuits are driven by statutory attorneys’ fees, irrespective of real liability on behalf of the auto manufacturers.”
Narain added that this area “has evolved over time from being consumer ‘protection’ to a money grab for plaintiffs’ firms who are filing the majority of the cases that take up the state and federal dockets.”
Combining forces
The pair of Narain and Maclear initially came together while working with a mutual automotive client.
Maclear described Narain as “like-minded” in a variety of ways and said the conversation of practicing together had been discussed several times throughout the years.
“This last year made sense timewise because there is such a demand for defense teams in the consumer automotive space,” Maclear said. “We also saw the tech and AI options come on the market that would allow us to scale.”
Narain is the onetime managing partner of downtown-based LTL Attorneys, where she led the firm’s consumer litigation practice and her clients included Ford Motor Co.
Maclear comes from the Century City outpost of Shook Hardy & Bacon, where she was a partner specializing in automotive litigation and also represented Ford on the defense side.
“Amy and I have both grown in this space and watched the evolution unfold,” Narain said. “This is exactly why we started Narain Maclear with emphasis on automotive – we understand it really well and have the tools the industry needs to navigate this type of attorney-driven litigation.”
They launched this year as part of a team of 15 total attorneys, with aspirations of “sustainable, smart growth,” Maclear said, and potentially doubling in size. The home office has six individual offices with an open floor plan, which accommodates a largely remote employee composition.
“The demand for knowledgeable defense firms to implement strategy and if needed, try the cases is high,” she said. “It is a volume practice, so the team and workflows make or break it. Both Sabrina and I are grateful for our team and how hard they work. We know they are the reason we are successful.”
The team has diversified its work already. This month, the firm secured a $3.7 million win for Mid-Wilshire-based client Hidden Empire Film Group in federal court, in a case involving computer fraud.
