Robert L. Graham — Partner at Jenner & Block

Mr. Robert L. Graham is a current Trustee at Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Mr. Graham is the Managing Partner of Jenner & Block. He is located in the Chicago office. Mr. Graham is Chair of the Firm's Environmental, Energy and Natural Resources Law Practice. He also has extensive experience in all types of business litigation, computer software licensing and litigation, health care and class action and civil rights litigation. Mr. Graham has served on the board of advisors of Shepard's Environmental Liability In Commercial Transactions Reporter. He taught environmental law at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago for ten years. He has also chaired bar association committees on environmental law, lectured on matters of environmental concern at numerous conferences and seminars, served as editor of Illinois Environmental Laws and Regulations, written extensively on environmental law issues and taught environmental law at Loyola University School of Law. Mr. Graham is co-author of the environmental law casebook, Environmental Law and Policy: Nature, Law and Society, Second Edition, by Plater, Abrams, Goldfarb & Graham (West Publishing, 1998), a textbook in use in many of the nation's law schools. Mr. Graham's environmental and energy law practice has specifically included representation before regulatory agencies, courts and among private parties concerning (i) the location, siting, licensing, permitting and remediation of plants and facilities; (ii) toxic torts and environmental impacts pertaining to industrial, residential and commercial developments; (iii) the applicability of federal and state statutes to disputes involving the operation and/or sale of businesses and real estate and (v) the handling of chemical spills and industrial accidents. Mr. Graham has litigated matters before federal and state courts and agencies across the country, including the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the Illinois Supreme Court. He has broad experience in a wide variety of regulatory and transactional settings involving federal and state agencies. Mr. Graham also has extensive experience in matters involving the legal protection of computer software, trade secrets and proprietary rights. He has represented start-ups and well established companies, in the development, licensing and protection of proprietary products and inventions. In that regard, he also has extensive litigation experience in federal and state courts concerning the legal protection of computer software and agreements designed to ensure proprietary rights. Mr. Graham's broad range of experience also extends to civil rights matters. In that connection, his cases before the United States Supreme Court have involved commercial speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, criminal procedure and the death penalty. He has also represented the City of Chicago and the Chicago Park District, in cases involving allegations of discrimination in hiring, firing and compliance with federal court consent decrees. In addition, he has represented private companies accused of terminating employees wrongfully and in violation of applicable statutes. His practice in this area has involved cases in the United States Supreme Court, the federal trial and appellate courts and the state courts of Illinois. Mr. Graham also has extensive experience in class action litigation. He has successfully defended numerous cases brought as class actions in federal courts throughout the country. He has also successfully represented plaintiff cases in federal civil rights, RICO and consumer fraud actions. In that connection, he has extensive experience in the enforcement of and the defense of federal consent decrees. For fifteen years, Mr. Graham was a member of the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Jury Instructions in Civil Cases. He is a former President of the Chicago Council of Lawyers. He currently is a member of the Board of Directors of the Appleseed Fund for Justice, the American Law Institute and the American Bar Foundation. Mr. Graham is a member of the Executives Club and a Board member of the Northwestern Center for Wrongful Convictions. Mr. Graham graduated from the University of Michigan and Harvard Law School. He has been an attorney with the Firm since 1972.