Rachel Adams

An immersive litigator who connects with clients, as well as judge and jury

When she represents clients in litigation, Rachel Adams immerses herself in her clients’ businesses to become part of their team.

“When you’re representing an organization, you have to know the day-to-day life of your client’s business to represent them effectively,” Rachel says. “I enjoy embedding myself with clients and connecting to them on a one-on-one basis. You can’t get that depth of information from reading documents — you have to sit down with your clients and gain an understanding of their world.”

It’s this immersion mentality — “knowing the facts backwards and forwards” — she brings to clients across an array of industries in her passion as a litigator, where she represents clients in complex civil litigation and arbitration matters, including administrative law disputes, constitutional officer actions, shareholder derivative suits, wrongful death and premises liability actions, construction defect arbitrations, and more. As a litigator, she has served on large case teams, where she has coordinated large-scale document productions and drafted dispositive motions.

Prior to joining ThompsonMcMullan, Rachel was a commercial litigation associate for an AmLaw 100 firm in Washington D.C. There, she mastered the fundamentals — and on-your-feet art — of trial and arbitration litigation in high-stakes, bet-the-company cases. “Being a successful litigator means not only being aggressive and zealous in representing your client, but having the ability to connect on a personal level with judge or jury,” she explains. “You want to be in tune with your audience.”

And, she notes, while litigators are seen as advocates, rather than counselors, she appreciates taking the next step with clients after litigation has been resolved. “It’s important,” she says, “that we are there to help our clients take the next steps to analyze lessons learned, comply with judge’s orders, and equip them for success in the future.”

Prior to her time in private practice, Rachel served as a judicial intern for the Hon. David J. Novak in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and as a deputy clerk for the Fairfax County Circuit Court, which sparked her interest and catapulted her into law school.

During her time at the University of Richmond School of Law, Rachel served as editor-in-chief of its Law Review. It’s a position that not only honed leadership skills, but gave her access to and close discussions with the school’s Dean. It also kept her on cusp of topical, timely legal trends. “I felt like I was contributing to the law school as whole, not just the Law Review,” she explained. “I really loved leading that team of sixty fellow students to make a meaningful mark on Virginia legal scholarship.”