Cutting a Path

One of Laura Mattiacci’s most talked-about employment litigation victories is also one she’s not necessarily clamoring to discuss. In 2023, she represented former Starbucks regional manager Shannon Phillips, who was one of multiple white employees fired after a high-profile arrest of two Black men at a Starbucks near Rittenhouse Square in 2018. The manager of that site—which was under Phillips’ umbrella, though she didn’t directly work there—asked the two men, who hadn’t ordered anything, to make a purchase or leave. When they refused, the manager called the police. Videos of the arrest racked up millions of views and sparked a national outcry; Starbucks responded by closing stores around the country for racial bias training, and changing its store policies. 

Not long after the arrests, Phillips was fired. She filed a lawsuit alleging the firing happened because the company decided to “punish white employees … in an effort to convince the community that it had properly responded to the incident.” 

After a six-day trial in which Starbucks sent a bevy of high-level executives to testify, Mattiacci persuaded the jury that race was a determinative factor in the multibillion-dollar company’s decision to terminate Phillips. The award: $25.6 million.

The case took center stage on Good Morning America; there were splashy pieces in The New York Times. 

And people had feelings. Lots of feelings. 

“It was my largest verdict, but it wasn’t all positive,” says Mattiacci, who received death threats. Concerned for her four children, she adopted a big dog and beefed up her home security. 

“I keep a drawer of threat letters,” she says. “I’m like, ‘If I ever turn up dead, somebody go through that drawer.’”

 Of these types of cases, Mattiacci says, “civil rights laws are here to protect everybody equally.”

For most lawyers, a victory like this, against one of the most prolific global restaurant chains, would have a premium place on the career highlight reel.

But, as it turns out, she spends more time thinking about $7 than $25.6 million. In a 2018 age-discrimination case she tried in federal court against her alma mater, Temple University, her client was fired and lost her low-income housing as a result. 

“The jury goes off to deliberate, and we’re standing in the hallway and I said, ‘I can run and get you something to eat.’ And she says, ‘Oh, no, no, I can’t. I only have $7 in my bank account,’” Mattiacci remembers. “I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I was just praying to the jury, ‘Please find for this woman, because if you don’t, she’s not going to be able to care for herself.’” 

They did, coming back with a $910,000 judgment. “To this day, 

I still think about her, and that gut feeling of, ‘I hope I did enough.’”

A trio of catalysts propelled Mattiacci toward the law.

First was a sense of justice. She grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of Willow Grove. Her father has worked in the same supermarket for 50 years (“He’s the ‘mayor’ of Dresher,” Mattiacci says) and her mother worked at Abington Memorial Hospital 

for decades. “They don’t make them like my parents anymore,” she says. 

The couple had Mattiacci when they were 19. Money was tight, and, while Mattiacci learned from them how to be strong, she felt the class divide. “I had a general sense that it wasn’t fair,” she says. “That’s why it’s been so fulfilling to represent workers. This is deeply personal for me.” 

Second were the snails of the Lackawanna River. As a biochemistry major at the University of Scranton, Mattiacci was interested in cancer research after losing a friend to leukemia. But the work began to feel like a mismatch. “I realized I wasn’t going to be the one to find the cure,” she says. When she shared her doubts with her advisor, the professor pointed to her own 20-year study of a specific river snail as a potential path. “I realized then: I could not study snails,” Mattiacci says. 

The third and most definitive spark was Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. She read it during her junior year while she and a friend traveled from Ireland to Greece, staying in $10 hostels and living off street-vendor fruit. “I was so inspired by his journey from a hut to the presidency,” she says. “The underlying theme was the transformative power of a law degree.”

Once she returned to the States, she made a deal with herself. She’d take the LSAT, and if she scored well, she’d apply to law school. If she didn’t, it was on to Plan C. She did well. So well, in fact, that she ended up in the first class of Beasley Scholars, the scholarship program established by legendary trial lawyer James E. Beasley in 1999 that provides a first-year full ride at Temple.

Her particular ride started out a bit bumpy. “It took me a while to figure out what the word ‘plaintiff’ meant,” she says. “I was sitting there going, ‘plaintiff, defendant.’ I had no idea what I was doing.”

Eventually she found her way to the mock trial team and excelled, contributing to a national championship. She knew then that her only path was trial law; and she knew that there was no one she wanted to learn from more than Beasley. 

“I thought, ‘There is no way I’m going to go from Willow Grove to working at 12th and Walnut.” But she applied after graduation, and to her shock, was hired. She worked for Beasley for about two years, up until his death. “His most enduring lesson for me was to trust your presence,” she says. “If you’re in the room, it’s because you belong there. I feel very lucky to have had that time with him.”

In 2003, she landed at what is now Console Mattiacci. “Steve Console gave me a lot of freedom,” she says. 

She wanted to focus on something and become really good at it. “I knew what ‘plaintiff’ meant by now,” she says, laughing. “That’s what I wanted to do. The idea of starting that specialization at a small firm, having the autonomy from a managing partner who believed in me—it’s why I’ve never left.” Mattiacci became a partner at age 30.

It wasn’t long after she joined the firm that she had the first of four children.

“I felt so isolated,” she says. “The transition to motherhood was one of the hardest things I ever experienced. This is before social media. I’m working in the city, I’m driving from New Jersey, trying to pump at my desk, only to get home when it was dark and he was awake enough to drink the milk and pass out. It got so hard that I told a few women from law school who were also having children how difficult it was, and they reciprocated the same feeling.”

So Mattiacci founded Philly-MAMA. A shared email or two to talk all things motherhood turned into hundreds of women showing up monthly at rotating law conference rooms at various firms in the city. Older women discussed their experiences, and guest speakers, including psychologists, answered questions. “I remember thinking, ‘If I can just make it to the next month, I’ll survive,’” she says. 

Mattiacci is proud to note that many of those tired, overwhelmed young women now hold law leadership positions. “These women have gone on to develop policy and culture to be more supportive of women, which is what we set out to do,” she says.

Retired U.S. Magistrate Judge Diane Welsh credits Mattiacci with helping keep women in the law. “I was impressed when Laura was the mother of a young baby, her first, working such a demanding job, and yet she made the time and energy to create a group for women lawyers who were mothers,” Welsh says. “Philly Law Mama had a significant impact on many young women who might have otherwise felt isolated and overwhelmed, and very well may have left the profession. The fact that she would give of herself to other young women was incredibly notable, and it really did make an impact in the profession.”

Welsh remembers the first time Mattiacci appeared before her. “She’s so extraordinarily well-prepared,” she says. “She has terrific confidence, and her command and preparation for her cases is top of the line. But it’s her demeanor that really drew me to her. It’s well-known in the community that she’s had very successful jury trials and verdicts and has made precedent in the appellate courts. But what you might not gather is the extraordinary character, integrity, civility and professionalism that she displays every day.”  

Over the last decade, Mattiacci has put together a string of high-stakes courtroom victories that have challenged how corporate giants treat their workforces. She’s twice taken on AT&T and its “ratings and rankings” systems to recover millions for older workers. Other cases include a win in a retaliation suit against Ingerman Management Company on behalf of a Black HR director, and a $1.5 million breach of contract verdict against MLB Network for former Phillies pitcher Mitch Williams.

Federal judges have often documented her skill in their opinions, with Judge Timothy R. Rice describing her courtroom advocacy as “pivotal” and Judge Joel H. Slomsky citing her “stellar reputation and expertise.” After a hard-fought race discrimination win in 2022, Judge Christine P. O’Hearn noted that Mattiacci displayed a “level of restraint and professionalism” that is unusual in federal court.

“I have to deal with a lot of opposing counsel, mostly males, who are very aggressive and very condescending,” Mattiacci says. “I’m level. I don’t engage. We’re just here to make sure that justice is served. I’m telling a story of right and wrong while we’re sitting at my kitchen table. I feel comfortable speaking with everybody, no matter their station in life, which I believe is the benefit of where and how I grew up.”

She tries to employ a sort of tunnel vision when she’s working a case. “Sometimes somebody will say, ‘Oh, you tried a case against so-and-so?’ I honestly don’t even look on that side of the courtroom,” she says. “That person is irrelevant to me. The only people that matter are my client, my work, the judge and the jury. I try not to even look over there.” 

Joe Tucker of Tucker Law Group, the current president of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, has often been one of those opponents. 

“I’ve known Steve Console for forever, and then he turned Laura loose on me, who is a much nicer version of Steve,” Tucker says, laughing. “She sits in an ideal situation. She’s a trial lawyer. She doesn’t get involved in the disputes and the minutiae of the discovery process. She shows up, she’s ready and she’s unafraid. From the moment I met her, I liked her tenacity. She’s a Philly girl, and I mean that in a complimentary way. She has street smarts, book smarts, and emotional intelligence.”

Tucker says he knows what he’s going to get when she’s on the other side. “You’re going to get intensity. You’re going to get a zealous advocate. You’re going to get justified confidence, substance, and no fear. If you show her respect, she respects you,” he says. “She swims in water usually reserved for white men, so she rightfully has sharp elbows. I don’t mind sharp elbows because, as a Black man swimming in water that Black lawyers don’t swim in, I’m used to receiving the same level of disrespect. We have that in common. She’s cutting down the grass so that people can walk behind her. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing for other lawyers by making it not uncommon for someone like her, who is a mother and a trial lawyer, to have it all.”

Tucker nominated Mattiacci for the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and she recently traveled to Vancouver for the induction with her husband, personal injury lawyer John Mattiacci. The two first met while working at a day camp for kids. That was the summer before they both started law school at Temple, where they competed together on the trial team for two years. 

“He’s such an integral part of my life and my career,” Mattiacci says. “We just help each other. It’s not like one person’s career takes precedence over the other’s. He jumps in with these four kids—he’s doing it right now. Yesterday, I was the one picking them up when they were sick at school. It’s constant teamwork.”

At the IATL induction, the couple found themselves surrounded by attorneys from all over the world. “The guy who got inducted before me, his last trial, he got a multibillion-dollar verdict,” she says. “The next day, we somehow ended up on a six-hour fly-fishing trip in a freezing river. Not a one of us caught a fish. We were with him and another lawyer who owns a giant ranch in Montana, and I was like, ‘How did I get here?’ I feel like I’ve been in places where I did not think doors were possible for me, and I feel good. I feel fine. You just have to say, ‘yes.’ Go through the door. Be in the room.”