Best Lawyers in St. Louis, Missouri
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John Fox Arnold has served as general counsel and special counsel to public agencies, represented firms engaged in the underwriting and public offering of securities, and has represented developers and owners during acquisition and construction of governmental, commercial and urban redevelopment projects. In addition, he has structured sales tax rebate, tax abatement and tax increment financing transactions, and served as counsel in tax-incentivized transactions. Mr. Arnold has served as bond...
Michelle H. Basi practices primarily in the areas of education, special education, litigation, and labor and employment law. Michelle regularly advises school districts and charter schools on student matters, including special education and Section 504 compliance, First Amendment rights, Title IX compliance and student discipline. Michelle also advises schools districts and charter schools on employment matters, including Title VII, the ADA, the ADEA, the FMLA, and the Teacher Tenure Act. Mic...
Stephen L. Beimdiek is a proven litigator with more than 32 years of trial experience. He engages in all aspects of civil litigation and has successfully tried approximately 50 cases to verdict before state and federal courts. Mr. Beimdiek’s trial background includes claims involving business/commercial disputes, contracts, personal injury, construction, real estate transactions, medical malpractice, industrial accidents, premises liability, products liability and consumer warranty. He ...
Amy Bender-Levy is a member of the Firm’s family law department and is licensed to practice in Missouri and Illinois as well as the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Amy’s practice focuses on divorce, custody, modification, orders of protection, third-party custody, guardianship of adults and minors, and grandparents’ rights. Amy serves as a Guardian ad Litem representing the best interests of children in those cases in which she is appointed by the cou...
James F. Bennett has a national practice of cases that are not expected to settle before trial or appeal. He is lead trial and appellate counsel in high-profile cases, and has tried to verdict many cases involving eight- and nine-figure amounts in dispute. He has also prevailed before trial in other, similar cases and has argued appeals in eight different appellate courts around the country. Three times in recent years, he was awarded the “largest” defense or plaintiff verdict awa...
Thomas E. Berry, Jr. is a principal in the St. Louis, Missouri, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. Tom's practice is exclusively focused on representing management before state, federal or local administrative agencies as well as before both state and federal courts throughout the country. His practice is national in scope – he has represented employers in legal proceedings in over twenty different states. Tom has extensive litigation experience which permits him to effectively counsel and ad...
Celynda L. Brasher is a founding shareholder of the firm. She practices in the areas of education, litigation, and labor and employment law. Celynda represents numerous school districts throughout Missouri. She regularly advises boards of education and administrators on matters involving employee hiring, evaluation, remediation, and termination; student rights and discipline; special education; school finance; civil rights; contracts; the Missouri Open Meetings Act; church/state issues; and a...
Lawrence Brody retired as an Adjunct Professor at Washington University School of Law, after fifty years of teaching Estate Planning and Drafting. He is a visiting Adjunct Professor at the University of Miami Law School, teaching a course on Life Insurance. Mr. Brody is the author or co-author of numerous articles and books on the use of life insurance in estate and employee benefit planning, including two BNA Tax Management Portfolios, two books for the National Underwriter Company, and a nu...
Kenneth C. Brostron is in his 44th year of trial work. He defends health care providers and attorneys in professional negligence claims. He counsels businesses and government agencies in all aspects of their operations. He is also well-known for his work in education law, as well as state and United States constitutional matters. Mr. Brostron has been chief negotiator in labor discussions and lead counsel in a wide variety of complex litigation. His clients rely on his negotiation skills incl...
In her over 30 years of practice, Alisse Camazine has become one of the leading family law practitioners in the St. Louis area, focusing on child custody and complex divorce and property litigation. She has been listed in Naifeh and Smith’s, The Best Lawyers in America, for Family Law, since 1993. She became a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers in 1988 and has been certified as an arbitrator by the Academy. She received the Women’s Justice Award for Trial Practi...
Elizabeth Carver focuses her practice on appellate litigation in federal and state courts. She has successfully handled appeals in a wide variety of substantive areas, including employment, banking, class action, product liability, breach of contract, tort and insurance matters. She has extensive experience representing defendants in appeals involving large punitive damage awards. Ms. Carver has argued cases before the Eighth Circuit, the Federal Circuit, the Missouri Supreme Court, and the E...
John protects individual and business clients, diligently working toward the best possible outcome in all of their contested matters. Focused in the area of trust and fiduciary litigation, John is a Fellow in the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (“ACTEC”). John is also the Chair of the Missouri Bar Committee on Fiduciary Litigation and was recently named as the Lawyer of the Year by Best Lawyers for Trust and Estates Litigation. John serves clients by providing counsel...
Debbie Champion is a founding partner in the firm Rynearson, Suess, Schnurbusch and Champion. Ms. Champion actively practices in Missouri and Southern Illinois state and federal courts. She has argued before the Missouri Supreme Court and the Eastern, Western and Southern District Missouri Courts of Appeals, and the Illinois Court of Appeals. She has also argued in the federal court of the United States District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri, and the Eighth Circuit a...
Tom Clark serves as the firm's Chief Operating Officer and leads the firm’s St. Louis office. His expertise encompasses all aspects of employee benefits programs, including the design, implementation and compliance of retirement plans, health and welfare plans, and executive and incentive compensation arrangements. He also has a robust practice assisting covered service providers in meeting their ERISA compliance needs. Mr. Clark’s vast litigation experience complements the firm&r...
Morry S. Cole handles complex litigation. He has served as lead trial and appellate counsel in a wide variety of complicated cases in state and federal courts throughout Missouri and the Midwest. Mr. Cole received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Baylor University, specializing in finance. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law. While in law school he served as an editor of the Missouri Law Review, a research assistant for Professor Martha...
John Comerford handles all phases of complex, high-exposure business litigation, employment discrimination defense and corporate internal investigations. He represents and counsels Fortune 500 companies, senior-level executives and government employees. John is a first chair trial lawyer. He tries cases to verdict in state and federal courts and through any appeals. His clients include major electronic equipment suppliers, healthcare providers, large retailers, energy companies, and business ...
Ian Cooper serves clients in employment, higher education, commercial, and tort matters. Ian regularly serves as lead counsel in significant cases, including class actions and other complex litigation and has tried numerous jury and bench trials in Missouri and Illinois. He has argued cases before the Missouri Supreme Court, the Illinois Supreme Court, the Missouri and Illinois Courts of Appeal, and the United States Courts of Appeal for the Seventh and Eighth Circuits and has briefed importa...
Timothy M. Cronin is a skilled trial attorney that focuses his practice on personal injury, product liability, medical malpractice, and class action matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, majoring in economics. After graduating and while attending law school at night, Tim worked as a performance analyst at A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc. He graduated magna cum laude from Saint Louis University School of Law with a certificate in civil li...
Stephen Daiker focuses his practice on estate, gift and income tax planning for high net-worth individuals, charitable planned giving, and succession planning for owners of privately-held businesses. He is a frequent speaker on these topics and has written articles for numerous publications, including Taxation for Accountants, taxation for Lawyers, The Florida Bar Journal, The Journal of the Missouri Bar, The Journal of Financial Planning, and the Tax Management Journal of Estates, Gifts and ...
Throughout his career, Michael Dalton has devoted 100% of his work to fighting on behalf of injury victims and has collected tens of millions in settlements and judgments on behalf of victims and their families. A Missouri native, Michael attended the University of Missouri-Columbia for undergrad and law school. At Mizzou, Michael earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a minor in English. He continued his education at Mizzou Law and was a writer for the Journal of Dispute R...
M. Graham Dobbs graduated with honors from Saint Louis University School of Law in 2000, where he served as a Student Editor of the Journal of Health and Hospital Law, was a member of the Health Law Association, and completed the school’s nationally recognized Health Law Certificate program. Mr. Dobbs also received an Academic Achievement Award in Evidence, and served as an intern at the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri. He obtained his BSN, nursing undergraduate degree...
Edward L. Dowd Jr. is a litigator who defends corporations, professional service firms and individuals in high-stakes, complex civil, and white collar criminal cases and investigations. He represents clients with the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the SEC, DOJ, EPA,, IRS, Health and Human Services and other federal and state agencies. In addition, Ed works with companies to strengthen corporate compliance in order to avoid the initial missteps that result in investigations and trials. Ed&rsqu...
Don M. Downing is a former Missouri Chief Deputy Attorney General and managing partner of the St. Louis office of one of the region's largest law firms. As Chief Deputy Attorney General - Missouri's top appointed legal officer - from 1993 to 1995, Mr. Downing was the lead lawyer in cases involving consumer protection, antitrust, environmental, securities and many other areas of law. He appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States four times, including one case he personally argued. ...
Tad Eckenrode is the founder and managing office of Eckenrode-Maupin, Attorneys-at-Law, a small boutique litigation practice with primarily an insurance defense focus, although the firm attorneys also handle construction and municipal law issues, estate planning and business/corporate issues. In the realm of the firm's litigation practice, and that of Mr. Eckenrode personally, cases involving medical malpractice, product liability, nursing home injuries and deaths, automobile accidents, premi...
Mat Eilerts has gained a reputation as a skilled and knowledgeable Family Law attorney in Missouri and Illinois. Having specialized in Family Law for almost 20 years, Mat has handled thousands of domestic relations cases in the St. Louis Metropolitan area, including high conflict and complex dissolution of marriage and custody matters. He possesses a unique style in the area of Family Law due to his experience as not only a successful litigator, but as a trained and experienced mediator and g...
Richard J. Eisen has tried and settled numerous complex family law cases. He frequently lectures and publishes articles in the area of family law. He is a certified divorce mediator and has been appointed by the Court as a Guardian ad Litem for children in custody disputes. He concentrates his practice in the area of family/domestic law, including dissolution of marriage, legal separation, paternity, maintenance, child support, child custody, modification matters, enforcement, and pre/post-nu...
Robert F. Epperson Jr., a founding member of Dowd Bennett LLP, handles complex commercial litigation, internal investigations and appeals. Representing domestic and multinational corporations, as well as high net worth individuals, Robert focuses on civil litigation and appeals in an array of industries such as agriculture, real estate, financial services and insurance. He also conducts internal investigations and counsels clients in connection with investigations undertaken by the U.S. Depar...
John R. Fenley was named a partner in 2019. He practices in the areas of family law and criminal defense. He received his bachelor’s degree in communication and political science from DePauw University and his law degree from Saint Louis University. While in law school, Mr. Fenley served as a staff member and editor for the Saint Louis University Law Journal. He also interned with the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s office before joining Reinker, Hamilton & Piper, LLC....
