Sarah Doles on Finding Your Voice After the Bench

In Episode 29 of Raising the Bar with RebuttalPR, Ray DeLorenzi sits down with Sarah Doles, shareholder at Levin Papantonio, for a conversation about evolution, credibility, and what it means to step into advocacy after more than a decade inside the federal judiciary. Sarah’s path to plaintiffs’ work was not linear. After watching her father argue before the United States Supreme Court, she chose law school with a desire to “fight the good fight,” then spent over thirteen years clerking at both the Eighth Circuit and the Southern District of Illinois. Those years shaped how she views briefing, credibility, and the responsibility lawyers owe to the court. The episode traces her transition from neutral observer to advocate, beginning with the Yaz birth control MDL and birth defect litigation involving SSRIs, and continuing into complex agricultural cases. Sarah discusses representing farmers in the Syngenta corn litigation and her ongoing work in the Paraquat MDL, explaining how mass tort practice has expanded beyond pharmaceuticals into environmental and agricultural harms. This is a conversation about perspective. About how time on the bench sharpens judgment in private practice. About earning trust in communities that are skeptical of litigation. And about the discipline of never overstating a case, even when the stakes are high.  Learn more about Sarah Doles https://www.levinlaw.com/attorneys/sarah-shoemake-doles