Michelle Paznokas

Michelle Paznokas has dedicated her legal career to advocating for victims of medical malpractice and catastrophic personal injury, contributing to numerous successful resolutions for her clients. She works as both a trial attorney and in post-trial and appeals matters. In December 2023, Paznokas assisted in a $19.5 million settlement in a medical malpractice case in Delaware County involving a college student who suffered a brain injury caused by an allegedly mistreated infection. Earlier that year, as co-counsel, she achieved an eight-figure settlement in a medical malpractice case in New Jersey for a man who suffered paralysis after spinal surgery.

In 2022, Paznokas was co-counsel in a $19 million settlement for a child who suffered a brain injury at birth, an $8 million settlement in a train accident case, and a $9 million settlement in a medical malpractice case for a child who suffered a brain injury at birth. In 2019, she was involved in a case producing a $4.7 million jury verdict in Montgomery County for the widow of a 58-year-old man who died after developing a bacterial infection that his primary care physician failed to diagnose. For her efforts, she was selected as a Pennsylvania Rising Star by Super Lawyers in 2025, recognizing the top 2.5 percent of attorneys in the state who are 40 or younger or practicing 10 years or less. Paznokas has been chosen by the National Trial Lawyers for inclusion in its "Top 40 Under 40" in Pennsylvania for plaintiffs' civil litigation.

Her prior legal experience includes working as a legal assistant for a family law and estate administration firm and interning at the City of Philadelphia's Law Department. Paznokas actively engages in pro bono work in various areas of law. In a challenging pro bono case, she helped win a $250,000 bench verdict in Philadelphia involving deed theft, including $54,000 in punitive damages for two adult siblings whose signatures were forged on the deed to their family home after their mother died. While in law school, Paznokas interned at an immigration non-profit organization, taught criminal law as a Dean's Scholar, and served as the executive notes editor on the law review at the Kline School of Law, which published her article exploring the protection of abused and neglected immigrant youth.

The article was later republished and distributed to immigration law practitioners by LexisNexis. Paznokas graduated law school in 2017 magna cum laude and sixth in her class. She won several awards, including Best Student Performance in medical malpractice.

She is currently the Secretary of the Kline School of Law's Inn of Court and an adjunct professor at the law school, where she teaches Litigation Drafting. Paznokas earned her B.A. at Temple University as a dual major in Anthropology and Spanish while running an a cappella group she founded and serving as the Dance Department head at a theatre company. She remains heavily involved in music, both singing and playing several instruments, and takes ballroom and Latin dance lessons with her husband.