Matthew Alexander Passen

Matthew Passen, partner with Passen Law Group, has a broad range of experience in cases involving serious personal injury and wrongful death, including motor vehicle and transportation accidents, defective products and medical negligence. He also represents crime victims in civil actions against responsible individuals or entities.

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. In addition to his general membership to the Illinois bar, Mr. Passen is a member of the Federal Trial Bar for the 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 heavily involved in 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 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 elected to the Board of Managers of the Chicago Bar Association and the Board of Directors of the Chicago Bar Foundation. He has served for many years as an Investigator for the CBA’s Judicial Evaluation Committee. He is also a member of the National Crime Victim Bar Association, where he has helped train victim advocates and represent victims of crime in civil actions.

In 2017, he was elected to two of the most prestigious legal societies: the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation and the Chicago Inn of Court. He was also recently profiled by the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism.

Mr. Passen serves as an Executive member (currently Treasurer) of the Associate Board of the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (formerly the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago), consistently ranked the #1 rehabilitation hospital in the world. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Chicago Bar Foundation’s Justice Entrepreneurship Project (“JEP”), an incubator for lawyers to create law practices that serve low and moderate-income individuals and families, a vastly underserved client base. He is also a past member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Conflict Resolution and the Board of Directors of the United Cerebral Palsy Association of Greater Chicago.

Mr. Passen is committed to honing his craft as a trial lawyer and has written and spoken on a variety of issues relating to trial practice. He serves on the Board of Managers of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. He is the founder and Chair of the Chicago Bar Association’s Trial Practice Committee. He is also 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 trial 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 LLP, one of the top commercial litigation firms in Chicago.