Legal Writing, Fourth Edition

Suzianne Painter-Thorne

J.D. (Order of the Coif), University of California, Davis, School of Law, 2002
B.A. (with high honors, Anthropology), University of California, Davis, School of Law, 1999

Professor Painter-Thorne teaches American Indian Law, Client Counseling, Legal Writing, and Property. In addition to teaching, she has coached several moot court teams throughout her six years at Mercer and is the faculty advisor to Mercer’s Advocacy Council.

Professor Painter-Thorne’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of law and culture, with particular emphasis on American Indian law. Her recent publications include: A Strange Kind of Identity Theft: How Competing Definitions of &"Indian” May Deny Individual Identity, 14 Conn. Pub. Int. L.J. 29 (2014); Tangled Up in Knots: How Continued Federal Jurisdiction over Sexual Predators on Indian Reservations Hobbles Effective Law Enforcement to the Detriment of Indian Women, 41 New Mexico L. Rev. 239 (2011); If You Build it, They Will Come: Preserving Tribal Sovereignty in the Face of Indian Casinos & the New Premium on Tribal Membership, 14 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 311 (2010); One Step Forward, Two Giant Steps Back: How the &"Existing Indian Family” Exception (Re)Imposes Anglo American Legal Values on American Indian Tribes to the Detriment of Cultural Autonomy, 33 Am. Indian L. Rev. 329 (2009); Contested Objects, Contested Meanings: Native American Grave Protection Laws and the Interpretation of Culture, 35 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1261 (2002). She has also written about legal writing, including 7 Virtues of Appellate Brief Writing: An Update from the Bench, 38 SW. L. Rev. 221 (2008), co-authored with the Honorable Harry Pregerson. Her current works-in-progress include Fraying the Knot: Tribal DOMA and Marital Property Rights, which examines the effects of tribal prohibitions of same-sex marriage on the disposition of marital property.

After graduating from law school, Professor Painter-Thorne was a litigation associate at Orrick, Herrington, & Sutcliffe in Sacramento, California. She then served as a law clerk to the Honorable Harry Pregerson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit before joining the Mercer faculty in 2006. Professor Painter-Thorne is a member of the American Constitution Society, Association of Legal Writing Directors, and the Society for American Law Teachers. She also serves on the board of the Legal Writing Institute.

Professor Painter-Thorne received her J.D. (Order of the Coif) from the University of California, Davis, School of Law and her undergraduate degree with high honors in anthropology from the University of Maryland. She is a member of the California State Bar.

Sheila J. Simon

Following law school, Sheila Simon worked as a staff attorney at a legal aid clinic, the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation from 1987 to 1992, providing legal services to indigent clients. She was an associate at the firm of O'Neill & Colvin in Carbondale, Illinois, from 1992 to 1994 and then served as an assistant state's attorney in Jackson County, Illinois from 1994 to 1998, where she prosecuted DUIs and domestic battery cases. Along with several other attorneys and with the support of school faculty, Simon helped to inaugurate Southern Illinois University's law school domestic violence clinic in 1998. She worked as a clinical assistant professor at Southern Illinois University School of Law from 2000 to 2005 and was promoted to clinical associate professor in 2005. She taught both lawyering skills and family law in addition to her clinical teaching.

In 2010, Simon was elected Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. She and her husband, Perry, have two daughters, Reilly and Brennan, and she plays banjo and bassoon in the band Loose Gravel.

Richard K. Neumann

At Hofstra, Alexander Bickel Distinguished Professor of Law Richard K. Neumann has taught Contracts; Transactional Lawyering; International Business Transactions; Legal Writing; Civil Procedure; Legal Interviewing, Counseling and Negotiation; Pretrial Litigation; Federal Courts; Trial Techniques; and clinical courses.

Professor Neumann is the author or coauthor of four textbooks: Transaction Lawyering Skills; Essential Lawyering Skills (with Prof. Krieger); Legal Writing (with Prof, J. Lyn Entrikin of the Univ. of Arkansas and Sheila Simon, Lt. Governor of Illinois); and Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing (with Prof. Kristen Tiscione of Georgetown Univ.) His articles have appeared in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, the Journal of Legal Education, the Clinical Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, and the Yale Journal of Law and Humanities, among others.

He is an editorial advisor to Aspen Publishers, one of the largest publishers of law school textbooks. He has served on several committees of the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar as well as a number of ABA site inspection teams. He has been chair of American Law Schools’ Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning and Research; a member of the board of directors of the Legal Writing Institute, and a member of the board of directors and the executive committee of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. He is a frequent speaker at legal education conferences.