Tampa's legal community has a new standard-bearer. Jeffrey “Jack” Gordon, managing partner of MANEY | GORDON Trial Lawyers, has been named the 2027 “Lawyer of the Year” for Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs in Tampa by Best Lawyers® — the longest-running and most respected peer-review publication in the American legal profession.
The distinction, confirmed in the 33rd edition of The Best Lawyers in America®, is awarded to only one attorney per practice area, per metropolitan market, nationwide. For Tampa's Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs bar, that attorney is Jack Gordon — the latest, and arguably most prestigious, line on a resume that already includes Best Lawyers recognition since 2018, membership in the American Board of Trial Advocates, multiple state and nation board certifications, and a place in Florida Trend's Legal Elite Hall of Fame, one of just 185 members statewide.
Best Lawyers doesn't accept self-nominations and doesn't rank attorneys by advertising spend. Its Purely Peer Review® methodology starts with a nomination submitted by someone other than the lawyer under consideration; currently recognized attorneys in that same practice area and region then confidentially evaluate their peers. Results are narrowed to final honorees, each confirmed to be in good standing with their state bar. Within each practice area and metro market, the single attorney with the strongest peer feedback is named “Lawyer of the Year” — in effect, lawyers deciding, anonymously and independently, who among their own competitors deserves the field's highest respect.
This year's edition reflects the highest level of selectivity in the award's 33-year history, built on 3.8 million evaluations submitted this cycle and more than 30 million historical evaluations dating back decades.
Out of roughly 1.4 million licensed lawyers in the United States, only about 5% earn Best Lawyers recognition in a given edition. Narrow that to Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs specifically, and just 0.04% of all U.S. lawyers are recognized by Best Lawyers in that practice area. Of those, only about 0.01% of all U.S. lawyers nationwide are selected “Lawyer of the Year” in that specialty — and in Gordon's case, for Tampa specifically.
Figure 1. Jack Gordon's recognition sits at the center of a field that narrows from 1.4 million licensed U.S. lawyers to roughly 140 nationwide.
Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs is also not a small or obscure specialty — it's the third-largest practice area in the entire 2027 edition of The Best Lawyers in America, with 5,782 recognized attorneys nationwide, trailing only Commercial Litigation and Real Estate Law. Jack Gordon didn't clear a low bar in a niche category; he was selected as the single strongest performer, by peer vote, in one of the most competitive and heavily populated fields in American litigation.
Figure 2. Among the nation's five largest practice areas, Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs ranks third — Jack Gordon's field.
Jack Gordon's path to becoming one of Tampa Bay's most referred-to trial lawyers started with a work ethic instilled by a father who worked as a brick mason. That drive carried him through a Bachelor's degree in English at Tulane University — where he played lacrosse and minored in physiology — and into Tulane Law School, where in 1988 he introduced a proposal to the Louisiana legislature requiring pharmacies to provide enhanced disclosure on consumer prescriptions.
After law school, Gordon clerked for Judge Edward Barfield in Florida's First District Court of Appeal and served as Special Assistant Public Defender for Dade County's Appellate Division. In 1990, at 25, he became the youngest certified Circuit Court Arbitrator in Palm Beach County. He entered private practice — and began representing injury victims — in 1992, and has practiced in Florida continuously ever since.
What sets Jack Gordon apart, colleagues say, isn't just courtroom instinct — it's medical fluency. “You need to express the science in a way that can be felt and understood, without getting lost in technical language,” he says. “To do that effectively, you must become immersed in the science.” Three decades in medical malpractice litigation have made him functionally bilingual in law and medicine — essential, he notes, against “sophisticated defendants who have spent significant monies lobbying state legislatures and Congress to pass laws favorable to them.” His multiple state and national board certifications prove his experience goes beyond the office and into the courtroom.
That fluency has translated into results. In 1994, Jack Gordon built his early reputation representing more than 120 women injured by silicone breast implants against pharmaceutical manufacturers. In 2011, he secured the largest verdict against a Dram Shop in Florida Top Verdicts history — $8.25 million. And in December 2017, after jury selection and four days of a motorcycle-accident trial expected to run ten, GEICO's corporate leadership authorized a consent judgment before verdict: $14.95 million, the largest award of its kind on record at the time.
“Any person who is injured through the medical malpractice of doctors or hospitals would have the best representation if they hire attorney Jack Gordon and his law firm.”
Vera Brooks, Brooks & Brooks
MANEY | GORDON Trial Lawyers, headquartered in downtown Tampa with offices across the United States, has built its identity on a simple philosophy: take cases to verdict rather than settle them out of convenience. That posture has made the firm one of the most referred-to practices in the Tampa Bay area for medical malpractice, personal injury, and wrongful death cases — often drawing referrals from other attorneys who recognize the firm's willingness to litigate the most complex, expensive cases through trial. It matters especially in medical malpractice litigation, where Florida imposes a two-year statute of limitations (versus four years for ordinary negligence), a lengthy pre-suit screening process, and statutory damage caps — all of which favor well-resourced defendants unless plaintiffs' counsel is equally prepared to go the distance.
Best Lawyers® 2027 edition recognizes 81,620 attorneys across 151 practice areas and 203 metro markets nationwide, determined through 3.8 million peer evaluations this cycle. Of those tens of thousands of honorees, only 4,915 also received the additional “Lawyer of the Year” distinction. Gordon's selection places him in a genuinely small circle nationally, and establishes him as the peer-recognized standard in Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs for the Tampa market.
For a firm built on referrals from other lawyers, that kind of validation isn't just an accolade for the mantle — it's a direct reflection of the trust MANEY | GORDON Trial Lawyers has built across the Tampa Bay legal community over more than three decades making it truly the trial law firm trusted by lawyers.
Jeffrey “Jack” Gordon and MANEY | GORDON Trial Lawyers are based at 101 E. Kennedy Blvd, Suite 1700, downtown Tampa. Learn more at fightnegligence.com or view Jack Gordon's full Best Lawyers profile at bestlawyers.com.
