Maria Del Pilar Ocasio-Douglas

Maria del Pilar Ocasio-Douglas, Esq. is trial counsel to the firm and is the past Chairperson of the Board of Governors for the New York City Trial Lawyers Association, where she previously served as its President, the first and only Hispanic woman to hold that position. A former Prosecutor for the Bronx County District Attorney, Ms. Ocasio-Douglas has been trying civil cases with million-dollar results for two decades now. 

Ms. Ocasio-Douglas was born and raised in the Bronx, although she spent a great deal of her youth growing up in Hoyo de Manzanares, Spain, a small rural town on the outskirts of Madrid. She attended Fordham University from 1984-1988 where she, already fluent in Spanish, majored in Foreign Languages (French, German, and Italian). She then obtained her law degree from New York Law School.

Upon graduating in 1991, Ms. Ocasio-Douglas went to work for the Office of the District Attorney, Bronx County, becoming one of its first Hispanic Assistant District Attorneys, prosecuting violent felons, trying dozens of cases while achieving a remarkable near perfect record of conviction along the way.

In 1995, Ms. Ocasio-Douglas moved to the private sector working for the firm Pasternack Popish Reiff & Tuminaro, PC where she began trying civil personal injury cases, again with remarkable results. In 1998, Ms. Ocasio-Douglas joined  the law firm of Bauman & Kunkis, PC, handling that firm’s major personal injury, medical malpractice, toxic torts and product liability cases in the New York and Tri-State area, eventually making partner in 2004.

In 2008, Ms. Ocasio-Douglas left Bauman Kunkis & Ocasio-Douglas to form her own practice and became trial counsel to Douglas & London where her husband Gary Douglas is a founding partner.

Ms. Ocasio-Douglas serves as a Eucharistic Minister and Sunday Mass Lector at Saint Monica’s Catholic Church in Manhattan and for decades now has volunteered her time teaching fifth grade religious education twice a week at Saint Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church in Manhattan. Proud of her Puerto Rican and Spanish heritage she has been an outspoken advocate for the Hispanic Bar. 

Ms. Ocasio-Douglas is active philanthropically, devoting much energy to raising funds for the Dubin Breast Center of the Tisch Cancer Institute in New York, one of the world’s leading breast cancer hospitals, a place that is near and dear to her heart as she was not only a patient there, but is proud to say that her family is responsible for its founding in 2011.  In addition, she has been an active fund raiser and committee member for HelpUsAdopt.Org, helping couples regardless of ethnicity, gender, marital status, race, religion or sexual orientation adopt from the many hundreds of thousands of children around the world who are in desperate need of a loving home.

Somehow, she also found time to serve previously for over a decade as the President of the LCA at Léman Manhattan Preparatory School raising funds for student enrichment causes and teacher innovative grants.