For the past six years, Peter Prieto, the head of commercial and class action litigation Miami boutique Podhurst Orseck, has been involved in putting together an annual conference on multi-district class actions and mass tort litigation at his law school alma mater, the University of Miami School of Law. On Friday, for the first time in two years, The Miami Law Class Action and Complex Litigation Forum is set to push off in-person on campus. The forum, like a lot of things in the legal world, went virtual last year.

The Lit Daily took the occasion to catch up with Prieto, who headed up the national litigation practice at Holland & Knight prior to joining Podhurst Orseck in 2010. Over the past decade-plus, he’s seen his practice shift from primarily defense-side work to a mix of plaintiff- and defense-side assignments. Prieto, who serves as the plaintiffs’ chair lead counsel overseeing in the In Re: Takata Airbags Product Liability Litigation multidistrict litigation, is scheduled to moderate a panel of MDL judges including Senior U.S. District Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California, U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor of the Northern District of Alabama, and U.S Senior District Judge Federico Moreno and U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg, both of Prieto’s home court, the Southern District of Florida. The following has been edited for length and clarity