Matthew Alexander Passen

Matthew Passen is a personal injury lawyer with Passen Law Group. He represents people in cases involving motor vehicle crashes, medical negligence, sexual abuse, construction site accidents, defective products, and other similar matters.  He has recovered millions of dollars in jury verdicts and settlements for his clients and has received numer­ous awards and dis­tinc­tions, such as:

• Top 40 Under 40 Trial Attor­ney, The National Trial Lawyers (2015)
• Top Forty Illinois Lawyers Under the Age of 40, Law Bulleting Publishing Company (2015)
• “Emerg­ing Lawyer,” Law Bul­letin Pub­lish­ing Com­pany (2015)
• “Top 40 Lit­i­ga­tion Lawyers Under 40,” Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Legal Advo­cates (2014)
• “Ris­ing Star,” Super­Lawyers (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015)

Mr. Passen grad­u­ated law school at the top of his class (summa cum laude, Order of the Coif) from DePaul Uni­ver­sity Col­lege of Law in 2006. Dur­ing law school, Mr. Passen served as a judi­cial clerk for the Hon­or­able Ronald A. Guz­man, United States Dis­trict Court for the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois, and also interned with the United States Attorney’s Office, North­ern Dis­trict of Illinois.

Mr. Passen grad­u­ated with high dis­tinc­tion (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in Eco­nom­ics from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan in 2002.  While in col­lege, he played four years of hockey as a mem­ber of the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Club Hockey Team.

Mr. Passen is very involved in the local and national bar asso­ci­a­tions.  He was elected Chair of the Chicago Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Sec­tion (YLS) in 2015, which has over 9,000 attorney-members in the Chicagoland area.  He is also a mem­ber and Past-President of the Chicago Bar Foundation’s Young Pro­fes­sion­als Board (YPB), which is ded­i­cated to secur­ing equal access to jus­tice for all mem­bers of the com­mu­nity. Mr. Passen was appointed to the Board of Man­agers of both the Chicago Bar Asso­ci­a­tion and the Chicago Bar Foundation.

Mr. Passen also sits on the Board of Man­agers of the Illi­nois Trial Lawyers Asso­ci­a­tion, as well as the Board of Gov­er­nors of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for Jus­tice, New Lawyers Divi­sion.   He is a past mem­ber of the Board of Direc­tors of the United Cere­bral Palsy Asso­ci­a­tion of Greater Chicago, and serves on the Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Insti­tute of Chicago’s Asso­ciate Board.  He also serves as Vice-Chair of the Trial Tech­niques Com­mit­tee and Auto­mo­bile Law Com­mit­tee for the Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion, Tort Trial and Insur­ance Prac­tice Sec­tion (TIPS).

He is a 2015 grad­u­ate of the 3-week Trial Lawyers Col­lege, an invitation-only pro­gram ded­i­cated to train­ing and edu­cat­ing lawyers who are com­mit­ted to the jury sys­tem and to rep­re­sent­ing and obtain­ing jus­tice for indi­vid­u­als.  The Col­lege was founded and led by leg­endary trial lawyer, Gerry Spence, and took place at his ranch in Wyoming.

Prior to join­ing Passen Law Group, he was an asso­ciate at Jen­ner & Block, one of the top com­mer­cial lit­i­ga­tion firms in Chicago.

Mr. Passen has com­pleted sev­eral triathlons, includ­ing an Iron­man in 2008.  He is mar­ried with two young children.