Slaying the Beast: Local attorney has national reputation in campus sexual assault, hazing cases
December 2025
Doug Fierberg is there for people in their darkest hours, as they live out and process what often amounts to their worst nightmares.
Sometimes it's parents of young adults who died in hazing or other university-related incidents. Other times it’s the survivors of brutal sexual assaults in college or the families of mass shooting victims. In almost every instance, these people are dealing with major trauma while going up against powerful institutions with seemingly unlimited resources for their defense.
Fierberg has made a name for himself handling these types of cases. And while he’s certainly adept at comforting his clients, that’s not what they hire him for. They hire him to fight. To tear down the daunting institutional defenses and deliver justice.
“In so many of these circumstances, even as I'm working in a trauma-informed way, the people that have retained me are looking not for emotional counseling,” he said. “They’re looking for strategy. They’re looking to figure this thing out. They’re looking to slay the beast.”
The Fierberg National Law Group, based in Traverse City, has slayed beasts to the tune of about $380 million in settlements over the years, Fierberg says. They aren’t slowing down any time soon.
DC to TC
Fierberg is from the Detroit area and ended up in Washington, D.C. for law school, and he stuck around the nation’s capital to start his career. Though he first worked at a firm that handled mostly commercial and corporate cases, he ended up with two cases representing rape victims.
These cases made an impression that eventually clarified his career path.
“I grew up in a world that was very focused on having purpose and having meaning to your life and doing things that helped others, and I did not find that in …solving a problem for corporation A versus corporation B,” he said. “I found it in standing with individuals who were facing the worst thing imaginable in their lives and working with them to change the outcome, take control of the madness, regain some sense of agency, and be able to move forward knowing that they had done everything they could to … honor their deceased family member or hold a terrible wrongdoer or wrongdoers accountable.”
He also recognized at the time that there really was no law firm that specialized in representing young people who got hurt or killed in schools, despite the other side being very well armed.
“There were firms that defended schools and institutions that were involved in hurting people across the country, and they had a lot of institutional knowledge. And so when your average family came forward and had something like this happen … they wouldn't even know where to go for an experienced attorney,” he said. “And they were at a very serious disadvantage because the attorneys that those institutions had spent years protecting those institutions.”
After doing the work in D.C. for about 20 years, he relocated to northern Michigan in 2016 – first in Leland and then in Traverse City. He had vacationed here as a kid, and decided to make the jump for quality-of-life reasons.
“It was a big risk, but I credit my wife with really being insistent about it, and it worked,” he said. “There's a lot of pride from being able to do it from northern Michigan.”
There are potential downsides, of course. Even with Fierberg’s reputation, there’s a chance that people might not think he’s good enough because he’s not surrounded by skyscrapers.
“If you're a parent in California and you suddenly find this lawyer in Traverse City, which you've never heard of, would you consider retaining them?” he said. “Because you're getting a choice of that or somebody from Los Angeles or something like that.”
But he finds plenty of steady work being based here, and he’s very happy to have hired several local attorneys who can now operate on “another level of lawyering.”
“It’s giving the opportunity to some very smart people who want to make northern Michigan their home to be able to do really quality legal work on a national level without having to live in Chicago or New York, those sorts of things,” he said. “And if you get experience on that turf, imagine what you can bring to local Traverse City residents.”
The good fight
Fierberg has had many high profile successes going against major institutions, including an $11 million settlement from Virginia Tech for the families of 21 people killed or wounded in the 2007 mass shooting there.
The one thing that never changes is that the cases are tough because the opposing attorneys are always very, very good.
“The lawyers on the other side are not run of the mill. They're at the top of the food chain on the defense side,” he said. “So you have to be smarter, and you have to evaluate and play that chessboard and know where you can't be and where you have to be and know where they want to put you and where you can't be put.”
As long-time specialists in this arena, Fierberg and his team know where to find the gaps in the armor. It doesn’t mean they’ll always win, but they have much better luck than most.
“When we go after them, we're going after them in ways that no other law firm is,” he said. “I've seen Oz behind the curtain. I know the levers Oz is gonna pull. And we've been able to circumvent that many, many times.”
Locally and elsewhere, Fierberg is also known for his fire-and-brimstone presentations to local civic groups about the prevalence of sexual assault and hazing problems at universities.
Fierberg at a press conference announcing a settlement for victims of the Virginia Tech shooting.“The prevention issue is really important, and … I do think people are entitled to hear it straight. Telling people the truth arms them with information that they can use to protect themselves,” he said. “What comes through so many times in this work is that I'm interacting with people that are traumatized, confused and trying to catch up with the truth. And had they maybe known [the risks], they would have done things differently.”
Some of the advice he gives is relatively straightforward, and he tries to hammer it home over and over again.
“I have two daughters, and they both went to college. And one of the many things they knew was if they're going into [a fraternity house], they have to go in with a partner or a buddy. They have to stay with that buddy, and they have to never drink from an open container or a container that's been handed to them,” he said. “You just do that, and you've avoided a whole world of potential issues.”
Asked about the reputation he’s gained for his work, Fierberg demurs. He's been interviewed by CNN's Anderson Cooper, appeared on "Good Morning America" and had scores of other media appearances, but he doesn't let it get to his head.
“I really feel like so much of the world, particularly involving men, involves a level of making the work about themselves or the accomplishments about themselves,” he said. “And I just haven't spent a lot of time focusing on that. I'm happy to be there and to be doing this and to be trusted to do it, but at the end of the day, I don't come home and raise a fist and say, 'It's about me.'”
