Paula Fisette Sweeney
Paula Sweeney is a founding partner in the firm. She is board certified in Personal Injury Trial Law and originally practiced only in the demanding area of plaintiff's medical negligence litigation. She now additionally handles serious injury and death cases arising from negligent trucking, products liability, and some environmental cases.
She is a past president of the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association 1991, past president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association 1998, and past president of the Dallas Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates 2001 (ABOTA); she has been a Governor of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, and is a former member of the Board of Directors of the State Bar of Texas. Ms. Sweeney is nationally recognized in the field of medical negligence litigation, having been asked to speak to lawyer, physician and health care provider groups throughout Texas and much of the rest of the country, and has obtained record-setting medical malpractice verdicts, including what was at the time the largest compensatory death verdict in the history of Dallas County. She has handled a variety of appellate cases, resulting in the revision of unfair law in both the Texas Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals.
   
 

She has also been appointed to significant positions by the Supreme Court of Texas, including the Supreme Court Rules Advisory Committee, on which she served for 14 years, the Supreme Court Task Force on Medical Malpractice Discovery, and the Supreme Court Task Force on The Jury Charge, and served on the Pattern Jury Charge Committee for over ten years.

She is a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and has just been admitted to the International Society of Barristers. Honors from other sources include recognition as the Texas Nurses' Association Health Care Professional of the Year and "Alumna of Distinction" from the University of Dallas, as well as inclusion in the "Million Dollar Arguments" audiotape series and inclusion in the publications Who's Who in American Law, Best Lawyers in America, Law Register of Preeminent Lawyers, D Magazine's listing of Best Lawyers in Dallas (malpractice), and Texas Monthly Super Lawyer, Top 50 Female Lawyers in the State, and Texas' Top 100 Lawyers.  She was featured in the October, 2008 Texas Monthly edition article “The Crusader”,  and Texas Lawyer article “Extraordinary Women in Law”.

She is a frequent teacher and invited lecturer, having been asked to speak to legal, medical, nursing and other professional groups across Texas and much of the United States.

In 2003, because of her work during the legislative session in trying to protect medical consumers' rights from the lobby-driven onslaught to take them away, she received the Defender of Democracy Award from Common Cause of Texas. Additionally, the State Bar of Texas has recognized her commitment to Continuing Legal Education by awarding her annual update on Health Care Liability its “Best Continuing Legal Education Paper” award and, in 2009, by recognizing her with the prestigious Gene Cavin Award for Excellence in Continuing Legal Education.

Paula’s overview paper on Medical Liability in Texas, in addition to having previously received the State Bar’s “Outstanding CLE Paper” award, was recognized in 2010 with the Texas Judicial Council’s “Exemplary Non-Judicial Article” award.