7th Circuit Boot Camp: A Beginning and Intermediate Guide to 7th Circuit Practice (IL)

Faculty:

William J. Bauer has been a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since January 3, 1975.  Prior to that, he served on the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit of the State of Illinois, and Stateʹs Attorney of DuPage County, Illinois.  He practiced law with the firm of Erlenborn and Bauer, Elmhurst, Illinois, and held the position of adjunct professor at DePaul University College of Law. 

He is a graduate of Elmhurst College and DePaul University College of Law.  He served as an instructor for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy and is past president of the DuPage County Bar Association.  He is a frequent lecturer on trial and appellate practice and co‐author of a book on criminal procedure.

Michael A. Scodro is the Illinois Solicitor General, in which capacity he oversees the more than 40 attorneys in the civil and criminal appeals divisions of the Attorney General's Office and has argued on behalf of the State in the U.S. Supreme Court, Illinois Supreme Court, and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Mr. Scodro graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1993 and, following his graduation from Yale Law School in 1996, served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jose A. Cabranes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court.

After several years in the appellate group at Mayer Brown LLP, he became an Associate Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

In 2007, the Illinois Attorney General named him Solicitor General.

Mr. Scodro currently teaches the Supreme Court course as a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School, is a member of the American Law Institute, and serves on the board of the Appellate Lawyers Association. He speaks frequently to bar associations, law schools, and other organizations about the Supreme Court and appellate advocacy.

Erin McGinley is the senior law clerk to the Honorable Ann Claire Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a position she has held since 2004. 

Ms. McGinley began serving in 2003 as an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she has taught written and oral advocacy.  She has also taught in Emory Law School’s Kessler-Eidson Program for Trial Techniques.  Ms. McGinley’s experience also includes service on the faculty of several international advocacy training programs.  She made her first trip to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania in 2005 with United States and Canadian judges and attorneys to conduct a trial advocacy training program for ICTR prosecutors.  She returned to the ICTR the following year and served in the appellate section of the Office of the Prosecutor for three months, helping to prosecute persons accused of genocide and other crimes.  While there, she taught in an appellate advocacy training program for attorneys from the ICTR, International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, and International Criminal Court (ICC).  In 2007, Ms. McGinley served on the faculty of an advocacy training program for Liberian magistrate judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys in Monrovia, Liberia.  She also helped coordinate and served on the faculty for advocacy training programs in 2008 and 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya for Kenyan prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other attorneys.

Ms. McGinley was a litigation associate at a large law firm in Chicago prior to commencing her clerkship.  Before entering law school, she worked as a trial assistant at the public defender’s office in Portland, Oregon.  As the assistant director of a center serving the homeless and underemployed, she started a legal clinic.  Ms. McGinley is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Notre Dame and graduated first in her class from Loyola University Chicago School of Law.  She serves on the board of the Just The Beginning Foundation. 

Joel Bertocchi is an experienced criminal and appellate litigator. His background includes tours with both federal and state government, and he has litigated in courts ranging from the trial level to the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Bertocchi briefs and argues civil and criminal appeals, as well as complex motions (class certification, dismissal, summary judgment, etc.) in trial courts.

Mr. Bertocchi has briefed and argued two cases in the United States Supreme Court and more than two dozen in the U.S. Court of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts. In addition to his private practice, he has been a federal prosecutor as well as the top appellate lawyer for the State of Illinois.

Before joining Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, Mr. Bertocchi was a partner at what is now Mayer Brown LLP, where he handled civil and criminal appeals, drafted and argued complex motions in civil and criminal cases, worked extensively with expert witnesses and provided strategic legal analysis on regulatory, fraud and RICO issues.

From 1999 to 2002, Mr. Bertocchi served as the Solicitor General of the State of Illinois, where he was the chief appellate lawyer for the State and managed a staff of 40 lawyers handling civil and criminal appeals on behalf of the State, its agencies and officials. While Solicitor General, Mr. Bertocchi also served as Vice Chair of the Illinois Criminal Code Rewrite and Reform Commission.

Before serving as Solicitor General, Mr. Bertocchi was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney’s Office in Chicago. In that position he handled numerous complex appeals on behalf of the government, as well as jury trials and the supervision of federal grand jury investigations involving racketeering, private and government-related fraud, environmental crimes, public corruption and tax crimes.

Mr. Bertocchi also served as a Staff Attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and as law clerk to the Honorable Aaron E. Goodstein, United States Magistrate Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

In March 2007, Mr. Bertocchi received the Diversity Helping Hand Award from the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater Chicago, in recognition of his assistance to the Association in filing amicus curiae briefs in the United States Supreme Court in cases dealing with affirmative action in education. Mr. Bertocchi has also received the U.S. Department of Justice Director’s Award for Superior Performance, as well as the “Supreme Court Best Brief Award” from the National Association of Attorneys General.

Mr. Bertocchi is actively involved in a variety of professional organizations. He served on the Committee on Federal Criminal Jury Instructions of the Seventh Circuit from 1996 to 1999 and is now the Reporter for that committee. In addition, he was a member of the Committee on Federal Civil Jury Instructions of the Seventh Circuit and its Patent Subcommittee from 2002 to 2008. Mr. Bertocchi is a member of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association, a Master of the Bench of the Chicago Inn of Court and a member of the Illinois Appellate Lawyers’ Association. He is also a member of Hinshaw’s Diversity Committee.

He has taught appellate practice for the U.S. Department of Justice and the National District Attorneys’ Association.

Since 2008, Mr. Bertocchi has been selected for inclusion in "The Best Lawyers in America®" in the area of Appellate Law. He is also a member of the Leading Lawyers Network, where he was selected by his peers as a Leading Lawyer in Civil Appellate Law.

In 2008 and 2009 Mr. Bertocchi was named to the Super Lawyer list in the area of general litigation, by Illinois Super Lawyers magazine. In 2010, he was named in the area of appellate law.

Mr. Bertocchi is the primary author of the chapter on “The Record on Appeal and the Appendix,” in the treatise Federal Appellate Practice (BNA 2008). His presentations include “Investigating Employee Misconduct,” at a seminar for the Community Bankers Association of Illinois, Naperville, Illinois, June 2008.

Patricia S. Spratt is an expert litigator, with a focus on appeals and commercial and business litigation. Prior to joining private practice, Ms. Spratt clerked for then Chief Judge William J. Bauer of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Ms. Spratt teaches Appellate Advocacy at Loyola University, where she previously received her law degree and served as Editor for the Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal.

Mr. Weinberg is Sonnenschein’s Pro Bono partner.

Mr. Weinberg is a trial lawyer with substantial private law firm and public interest experience.  Most recently, he served as chief of the attorney general's Public Interest Division, where he was responsible for managing investigations and litigation for six bureaus: disability rights, civil rights, public utilities, tobacco enforcement, antitrust and special litigation.  In this capacity, he oversaw major litigation, including the Walgreens and Family Video disability rights cases, Peoples Energy/Enron fraud litigation, Aon/Gallagher contingent commission cases and numerous healthcare fraud matters.  He also served as lead counsel on several high-profile cases, including the Kool Mixx youth targeting litigation against Brown & Williamson and the ComEd/Ameren reverse auction electricity rate litigations.

Prior to joining the attorney general’s office, Mr. Weinberg was a partner at Jenner & Block in Chicago.  During his seven years at Jenner & Block, Mr. Weinberg tried five cases to verdict for substantial firm clients.  In addition, he maintained an active pro bono practice, including representation of a death row inmate who received clemency in 2003.  Mr. Weinberg also served on the firm’s pro bono committee.

Prior to joining Jenner & Block, Mr. Weinberg was a staff attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago (Englewood office), where he maintained a substantial caseload of individual matters on behalf of indigent clients and specialized in domestic violence matters and juvenile court abuse and neglect cases.  Mr. Weinberg also served as a law clerk to the Honorable William J. Bauer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

He graduated with honors from the University of Chicago in 1986, and earned his J.D. in 1990 from Northeastern University School of Law.