Richard L. Schnake, Attorney

Richard L. Schnake received his bachelor's degree, cum laude, from Southwest Missouri State University in 1979 and his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1982. He was an Executive Editor of the Washington University Law Quarterly, recipient of the Scribes Award for legal writing, and a member of the Order of the Coif, a national law honor fraternity. He served as the law clerk for Judge Warren D. Welliver of the Missouri Supreme Court before joining the firm in 1983. He has been a partner since 1988.

Mr. Schnake emphasizes appellate practice in both Missouri and federal courts. He has handled cases in the United States Supreme Court, Missouri Supreme Court, Missouri Court of Appeals, and the United States Courts of Appeals. In 1990, he received the David J. Dixon Appellate Advocacy Award from the Missouri Bar Foundation. He is a vice chair of The Missouri Bar Civil Practice & Procedure Committee and chairs its Appellate Practice Subcommittee, and he is a member of the American Bar Association's Council of Appellate Lawyers.

Mr. Schnake's practice also includes trademarks, copyrights, commercial law, and litigation. He has experience in trademark and copyright registration; trademark and copyright infringement claims and litigation; banking law; commercial and consumer financing; commercial paper transactions; real estate sale and financing transactions; and personal injury and products liability actions.

Mr. Schnake is a member of the Missouri Supreme Court Appellate Practice Committee, which the Supreme Court appointed in 2002 from appellate judges and lawyers throughout Missouri. He served 13 years on the Supreme Court's Civil Rules Study Committee, which substantially revised Missouri's civil court rules, and later its Civil Rules Committee.

Mr. Schnake is the author of Civil Rules Practice, Rules 85-88, 17A MISSOURI PRACTICE (1999), published by Thomson-West, the nation's largest legal publisher. The treatise covers Missouri court rules governing prejudgment attachments, condemnation, declaratory judgments, and child support. He is working on a second treatise covering Rules 89-99, which govern other special actions. He wrote Chapter 4, Settlement Conferences, MISSOURI APPELLATE COURT PRACTICE (5th ed. 2002), for The Missouri Bar's appellate practice treatise, and he has written several appellate practice articles for the Missouri Lawyers Weekly.

Mr. Schnake has regularly spoken on civil appellate and trial practice at seminars sponsored by The Missouri Bar and the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association.

Mr. Schnake is admitted to practice in Missouri and before the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Eighth Circuits, and the United States Supreme Court. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the Missouri Bar, the Eighth Circuit Bar Association, and the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association. He has been both secretary and a director of the SMBA.

Mr. Schnake is a director and past president of the Ozarks Counseling Center, a nonprofit United Way agency in Springfield that provides counseling services to those who cannot otherwise afford them. He is also a trustee of the Supreme Court of Missouri Historical Society.