Touchdown

Deborah Dixon is the founding partner of The Dixon Firm, a class action law office. She is also general counsel of the Los Angeles Chargers.

“I tell people that my full-time job is being a lawyer, and my hobby is being a lawyer,” she says.

With such multitasking prowess—did we mention that Dixon is also the immediate past president of the San Diego County Bar Foundation?—you might expect a big ego. Think again. Dixon readily discusses her issues with imposter syndrome, which initially made her hesitant to accept the Chargers job when it was offered.

“I speak about this because so many women face imposter syndrome,” she says. “It can be embarrassing to talk about because no one wants to admit they might have a little less confidence than a male colleague; but it creeps up on you without you being aware of it. Over and over again, studies show that women will not do something if they don’t meet all 10 of the specified criteria, but men will do it if they only meet 60% of the criteria. I think that’s great for men, but women need to do that, too.”

Dixon Firm partner Gerissa Conforti recalls a recent case in which other firms disagreed with Dixon on how to handle a particular issue.

“Everyone was telling her she was wrong,” Conforti says. “These were big personalities, and it’s easy to give in to those big personalities in mass cases. In our field, people like to be loud. Deborah doesn’t believe in being loud, but if she believes in something she holds her ground.”

Dixon went one way on the matter, the other firms went the other, and ultimately the cases were delayed over the issue in question—except those cases handled by The Dixon Firm. Her decision, Conforti says, “advanced our cases. That’s the type of thing that happens behind closed doors. You don’t often see how a lawyer handles those moments, but she did it with grace—just like she does everything. She gives 100% of herself to two full-time jobs. I don’t know how she does it, but she makes it look easy.”

“I tell people that my full-time job is being a lawyer, and my hobby is being a lawyer.”

Dixon was raised in San Francisco’s East Bay area, the middle of five sisters. “My mother says she knew I was going to be a lawyer from day one because I was the advocate in the family—for anything from curfew times to what events we could or couldn’t go to. I would say ‘That isn’t fair’ a lot. My mother would laugh and say, ‘Life isn’t always fair,’ but I didn’t appreciate that answer.”

So she continued to fight it. When Dixon became president of her high school class, she went to the school board to question why certain students got parking spaces and others didn’t. “It was a private school, and it felt unfair that some people got certain privileges. I would advocate to make policies and procedures transparent and fair.” It worked.

At UC Santa Barbara, she majored in law and society, a unique discipline that combined legal studies with philosophy, psychology, political science and history. While a student, she worked as a receptionist at a law firm. She also volunteered at a domestic violence clinic through Santa Barbara Legal Aid.

“I would help write restraining orders for our clients, most of whom were women,” she says. “I went to a hearing with one of our clients, who I had spent a lot of time developing the restraining order with. I went into the courthouse in Santa Barbara and I remember the judge telling me I couldn’t go past the bar that allows you to advocate on behalf of your client because I wasn’t a lawyer. I was struck that there was a visual reminder—that there was literally a bar in the courtroom that you could not pass if you were not a lawyer. And I remember thinking, ‘I have to get past that bar.’”

During her first year at California Western School of Law, she became convinced criminal law wasn’t the path for her. “I didn’t like the idea that I couldn’t select my clients,” she says. “As public defender or district attorney, there’s a lack of control, because you might not truly believe what you’re prosecuting but you don’t have a say, and I didn’t want to defend people I didn’t believe in.”

After graduating in 2007, as a lawyer at Wingert Grebing Brubaker & Juskie, she found herself representing real estate developers amid the global financial meltdown. “The properties were upside down,” she says, “and the banks were taking them back.” Her first case involved two developers suing each other over cost overruns. “It was not the ideal case because no juries loved developers at the time,” she says. “But I was so excited to be part of a jury trial that I didn’t care.”

In 2015, she moved to Gomez Trial Attorneys and shifted from business lit to class action and mass tort cases; three years later, she helped open Dixon Diab & Chambers. The Dixon Firm hung its shingle in 2023. “I wanted independence and control,” she says. “I wanted to be able to pick the cases I worked on.”

She also wanted to account for lawyer hours in a different way—based on what they produced, and when they worked best, rather than on traditional billable-hour metrics. “Some people are not early morning people—some people do their best work mid-day to evening,” she says. “The metric is we never miss deadlines and we always put our clients’ cases first. Other than that, there’s a lot of flexibility.”

Case in point: Med-mal attorney Kenneth M. Sigelman recalls his first conversation with Dixon, who was giving a reference for someone he was considering hiring. “We had a 50-minute phone conversation on a Sunday,” he recalls. “It’s extraordinary for a busy attorney to be willing to take that much time.”

The two are now handling multiple cases together in personal injury and medical negligence. “She has such passion for getting justice for her clients, and such a love for the law, that she just radiates a buzz,” he says. “She combines an extremely high intellect, exceptional people skills, and a strong work ethic. If she says she’s going to do something, it gets done on time and gets done perfectly.”

“Her calendar is her bible,” Conforti adds. “She has specific days she focuses on the GC stuff. And she selects her cases carefully. She surrounds herself with good people, but she gets down in the mud with you. If you are spending eight hours on a matter relating to a case, you know she’s spending 10 hours on it.”

Impeccable time management is one reason why the Chargers hired her. A Chargers official, whom she repped in a contract dispute, said the team was looking for a GC, and told her she was perfect.

“Most GCs come from a corporate background, but he felt a litigator could be good in this job, because we handle so many issues, and GCs need good time management and people skills,” Dixon recalls. “At first I had apprehension because I didn’t know how to be a general counsel. I didn’t know about NFL rules. That was the side of me that said, ‘You aren’t qualified for that,’ and he was saying, ‘Yes, you are.’”

At the time, she considered herself a casual Chargers fans; now she attends every home game. “My friends laugh at me because two years ago I understood what a quarterback was but they would need to explain to me exactly how the game works,” she says.

“Now I understand not only how the game works, but how it works behind the scenes. … I know all the regulations of when replays can be done, and when the lights and music can be on.”

Every other week, all the NFL GCs take part in a call to discuss issues that affect them. “The job is handling all aspects of anything that would need to be discussed with a lawyer—so whether that’s how the Chargers, with 250 employees, operates, or any outside litigation that may or may not involve the NFL,” she says.

For someone so careful with her time, Dixon loves cases that can seem never-ending. The Dixon Firm is one of several firms handling arbitration cases against the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, for allegedly failing to pay promised severance. She also handled one of the first class-action cases related to a defect in the iPhone 4 and 5, which had a faulty power (sleep/wake) button. In 2019, Apple agreed to pay $20 million to settle. Right before trial, she adds.

“There is probably an illness with trial lawyers in that we love the experience of trials,” she says. “I love preparing for trials, with all the hours and detail-oriented work. I love being able to present the issues in front of a jury or judge, even though it can be terrifying. I love the back and forth about what is right and what is correct in the law.”

In the defective product case, Apple was represented by a firm that brought 15 lawyers, who went up against the three lawyers at Dixon’s firm. “We had depositions all over the country,” Dixon remembers. “Their law firm would have different partners show up for depositions in northern California, New York, and Los Angeles. When I showed up in each place, they’d say, ‘Are you doing all of them?’”

Sigelman says Dixon’s remarks about imposter syndrome suggest “a high level of self-awareness, and the confidence to face and acknowledge the fears that any trial lawyer has to confront and overcome. … I have been trying cases for 40 years and I still get butterflies when I do an opening statement. Any lawyer who is a human being feels enormous responsibility in these bet-the-farm cases.”

Dixon certainly feels the human connection in her cases. “When you get in front of a judge, or especially jurors, and you know you are the voice of your clients to win or not win, it’s a lot of burden. I get nervous speaking in front of people in a huge federal or state courthouse, and knowing the power they have to believe your case or not. It creates this whole level of fear—but also motivation.”

Dixon handled a mass action against Pacific Gas & Electric, the Oakland utility, related to wildfires in 2017 and 2018. She contended PG&E was negligent in its equipment causing sparks and not clearing brush around its power lines. As Dixon prepared for litigation, the utility declared bankruptcy, complicating an already complicated case. Because of the bankruptcy, Dixon’s clients have not received the full payment of their settlement. So far, she says, everyone has received 60%.

“We had over 1,000 clients, and the hardest part was coming up with an infrastructure to manage the cases and claims for that many people who had been heavily traumatized,” she says. “I had lawyers and case managers who could help prepare the case, but ultimately I reviewed every single one before it was submitted.”

When she met with clients, she counseled them not just on the case, but on personal matters like where they could find housing. “From top to bottom,” Conforti says, “she is a class act.”