B.A., Macalaster College; J.D., Michigan
Kit Pierson is an Adjunct Professor of Law teaching Complex Litigation.
Professor Pierson is a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC. From 2010-2017, he was Co-Chair of the firm’s Antitrust Practice Group, which has been widely recognized as one of the leading plaintiff class action practices in the United States in antitrust and other competition law cases.
Professor Pierson has been selected by federal courts as co-lead counsel in many antitrust class actions over the past decade and has helped clients win settlements and judgments totaling almost two billion dollars in the past several years. He was one of the plaintiffs’ trial lawyers in the Urethanes Antitrust Litigation, which resulted in the largest jury verdict in the United States in 2013, which was then affirmed by the Tenth Circuit and resolved while the matter was pending before the United States Supreme Court. Before joining Cohen Milstein, Professor Pierson practiced law for two decades at Am Law 200 firms, representing plaintiffs and defendants in a broad range of complex litigation matters. This included many class action cases, such as representation of Microsoft in two major class action trials.
Professor Pierson has also worked on many civil rights and constitutional law matters. He is a member of the ACLU of Maryland’s Committee on Litigation and Legal Priorities. He represented several Guantanamo detainees and was lead counsel in one of the first successful habeas cases in which a federal court found that a young detainee was being unlawfully detained and ordered his release.
Professor Pierson graduated magna cum laude from Macalester College, with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science, and then graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, magna cum laude, where he was a Note Editor of the Michigan Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. Following law school, he served as a Law Clerk for the Honorable Harry T. Edwards, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, from 1983-1984 and as a law clerk for the Honorable Chief Judge John Feikens, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan from 1984-85.