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Faculty Bios |
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Andrea Lyon is the principal at Lyon Law. She is a renowned lawyer, author, speaker, professor and former Dean of the Valparaiso University Law School, who has been featured on national news and media outlets. Dubbed “The Angel of Death Row” by the Chicago Tribune, she was the first woman to serve as lead attorney in a death penalty case, and she holds an unparalleled 19 wins in 19 capital cases. Ms. Lyon has dedicated her career to advocating and upholding justice for all. She received her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University and her law degree from Antioch School of Law. Her publications include over fifty law review articles, over ten practice manuals and books, including The Feminine Sixth: Women in Criminal Defense, The Death Penalty: What’s Keeping it Alive , Team Defense in Criminal Cases with Mortimer Smith, and Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer. Her civil litigation practice concentrates on the prosecution of personal injury matters occurring through accidents, medical malpractice, nursing home negligence, police misbehavior and products liability. |
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Chief Justice Mike McGrath was raised in Butte, Montana. He earned a degree in business administration from the University of Montana in 1970. He served in the United States Air Force from 1970 until an honorable discharge in 1972. McGrath graduated from Gonzaga University School of Law in 1975. Following graduation from law school, he worked as a Reginald Heber Smith Community lawyer fellow in Reno, Nevada, providing legal services to low-income clients. He was a Montana Assistant Attorney General from 1977 to 1982. He was elected to five terms as Lewis and Clark County Attorney beginning in 1983. He was elected to two terms as Montana Attorney General. As Attorney General he served from 2000 to 2008, oversaw a staff of more than 700 employees and focused on methamphetamine prevention and natural resource and consumer protection issues. Mike McGrath was elected to an eight-year term as Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court in November 2008 and was re-elected in November 2016. |
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Prof. Ted Mermin directs the Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice at the UC Berkeley law school, where he teaches Consumer Protection Law and Comparative Consumer Law and serves as pro bono counsel to the Consumer Justice Clinic and adviser to the student Consumer Advocacy and Protection Society. Ted also directs the Public Good Law Center, which provides support to state and local governments fighting constitutional challenges to pathbreaking consumer and public health legislation, and the California Low-Income Consumer Coalition, a partnership of legal aid organizations dedicated to furthering the rights of vulnerable consumers through state and local policy advocacy. A graduate of Berkeley and Yale, Ted previously served as a Deputy Attorney General in the California Department of Justice and worked in private practice. His first career was as an elementary and middle school teacher. |
Greg Munro is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Montana’s Alexander Blewett III School of Law having recently retired after a career that involved teaching Torts, Insurance Law and Regulation, Pretrial Advocacy, and Trial Advocacy. Munro is a past president and board member of MTLA, and the recipient of MTLA's Appellate Advocacy and Career Achevement awards. He has researched and written the Insurance Consumer Counsel’s Column for Trial Trends. Professor Munro has published articles, a book and book chapters on topics of insurance, torts, medical-legal and legal education and is co-author of The Lawsuit Guide, a book for plaintiff clients, published by Trial Guides. He co-coached the law school’s national championship Trial Team in ATLA competition from 1989 until 1999. He practiced plaintiff’s civil litigation in Billings for thirteen years before joining the UM School of Law in 1988. In his 30 years at the law school, he continued to handle tort and insurance cases and also maintained a thriving pro bono practice. |
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Justice James Jeremiah Shea attended the University of Montana, where he earned his law degree; he then served as a law clerk to the Honorable Paul G. Hatfield of the United States District Court in Great Falls. After completing his clerkship, he moved to Portland, Oregon where he worked as a trial attorney with the Metropolitan Public Defender and then practiced civil law in the private sector. Justice Shea returned to Montana in 1996, and practiced in Missoula until 2005, when he was appointed Judge of the Workers’ Compensation Court, until 2014, when Governor Steve Bullock appointed him to the Montana Supreme Court. He was sworn in as an Associate Justice on June 2, 2014. |
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Justin P. Stalpes is a partner at Beck, Amsden & Stalpes, PLLC in Bozeman, MT. He is a graduate of the UM School of Law, where he served on the Montana Law Review. Justin was the recipient of MTLA’s Outstanding New Lawyer Award in 2014 and its Appellate Advocacy Award in 2016. Justin is an MTLA Board member and an active member of MTLA’s amicus committee. His practice focuses on insurance disputes, environmental contamination, minority shareholder litigation and serious personal injury. |
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Beth E. Terrell, a founding member of Terrell Marshall Law Group, concentrates her practice in complex litigation, including the prosecution of consumer, defective product, and wage and hour class actions. Ms. Terrell has served as co-lead counsel on numerous multi-state and nationwide class actions. Ms. Terrell received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Gonzaga University in 1990. In 1995, she received her J.D. from the University of California, Davis School of Law, Order of the Coif. She has been listed in Washington Super Lawyers®, Top 100 Super Lawyers®, and Top 50 Women Washington Super Lawyers® for many years. Ms. Terrell is a member of the State Bar of California and the Washington State Bar Association. Ms. Terrell frequently speaks at CLEs on a wide variety of topics, including employment litigation, class actions, securities litigation, and electronic discovery. Ms. Terrell is actively involved in the legal community and serves on several non-profit boards, including the Public Justice Foundation, the Northwest Consumer Law Center and the Washington Employment Lawyers Association. |
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