About James Farrin
James Scott Farrin is the Founder, President, and CEO of the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin in Durham, North Carolina. He launched the firm in 1997 with a single paralegal and grew it into one of the largest plaintiff firms in North Carolina, later expanding into South Carolina. The firm's practice areas now include personal injury, workers' compensation, Social Security Disability, complex litigation, whistleblower, civil rights, and eminent domain (in Georgia and North Carolina).
Farrin earned his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Phi Beta Kappa, from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and his Juris Doctor with honors from Duke University School of Law. After law school, he initially practiced corporate law in California before returning to Durham in 1995 to join a plaintiffs' firm and ultimately launch his own practice.
He played a leading role in one of the largest civil rights cases in United States history: In re Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation, Case No. 08-mc-0511 (PLF) (D.D.C.), where he served as class counsel and on the plaintiffs' steering committee. The case addressed the U.S. Department of Agriculture's discrimination against Black farmers across the United States.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Law Offices of James Scott Farrin
These results are credited to Law Offices of James Scott Farrin. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
Farrin co-lead counsel Gary Jackson won an $8 million class settlement for roughly 6,500 residents forced from their homes by the 2022 ammonium nitrate fire at the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant, with a separate $4.5 million for affected businesses.
A Johnston County jury awarded $5.1 million to the family of Joan Drake, killed when a driver going 98 mph struck her car as she turned into a Clayton Walmart, after Farrin attorneys Coleman Cowan and Donald Clack tried the case without putting on a single medical bill.
A mother and her two teenage daughters were seriously hurt in an October 2018 head-on crash on North Carolina Highway 49 with a company truck driven by an unlicensed man. After the injury claims were resolved by agreement, a federal court held that the construction company's commercial excess policy covered the accident and that interest was owed on top. The Fourth Circuit affirmed in August 2025, and the family's total recovery reached $2,861,458.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
