Butler Snow LLP is pleased to announce that attorney Kari L. Sutherland has once again been named a member of the Top 250 Women in Litigation for 2026 by Benchmark Litigation. This recognition marks Sutherland’s 11th straight year as a member of the list.
“We are proud to congratulate Kari on her latest recognition,” said Christopher R. Maddux, chair of Butler Snow. “Her inclusion in Benchmark Litigation’s 2026 list highlights her skill and dedication to client service.”
This year marks the 15th edition of Benchmark Litigation’s Top 250 Women in Litigation. The 2026 honorees were selected through a rigorous evaluation process that included months of research into individual litigators’ professional accomplishments, client feedback surveys, and one-on-one interviews. The result is a distinguished list recognizing some of the most accomplished women litigators in the profession.
Kari L. Sutherland
Sutherland is a trial attorney and focuses her practice on pharmaceutical and medical device product liability litigation. She represents clients in significant personal injury actions in courtrooms across the country. In July 2026, she served as lead trial counsel for Beau Rivage in Mississippi and obtained a defense verdict. She also served as lead and co-lead trial counsel for Monsanto in Roundup cases in California and Missouri. In late 2024, she was trial counsel in a school vehicular death case that resolved for her client the day before trial. The remaining defendant sought to hire her for trial starting the next day.
In 2022, she served as lead trial counsel for Johnson & Johnson in the District of Arizona and won a unanimous defense verdict after a jury trial involving decommercialized pelvic mesh products. Later in 2022, she again served as lead trial counsel for J&J in the District of Arkansas and won a unanimous defense verdict in another pelvic mesh case. Between those two trial wins, she served as trial counsel in the Southern District of Mississippi in a balloon implant case involving serious injuries, and again secured a unanimous defense verdict. Her other pharmaceutical product liability defense verdicts include those resulting from trials in California, Illinois and Louisiana.
Sutherland’s additional experience includes managing national counsel teams consisting of firms across the nation in two of the largest product litigations in history. Among other memberships, she is a Senior Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America and a member of the Trial Attorneys of America. She also invests in younger lawyers with significant professional development work.
Sutherland is a former Special Agent with the United States Secret Service. She received a 2017 Burton Award and a 2018 Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association “The Quarterly” Editorial Award for her written work. She frequently speaks and authors articles on litigation and trial-related topics, including for Butler Snow’s Pro Te: Solutio and publications such as Law360.
Sutherland obtained her Juris Doctor, with special distinction, from Mississippi College and a bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from the University of Alabama. She is admitted to the State Bars of Mississippi, Tennessee and Montana.
