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Featured Speaker Joseph W. Shea III '74 presents 'The Art of Lawyering'
Joseph Shea III '74 addresses Chase students and faculty.
Joseph Shea III '74 addresses Chase students and faculty.

Mar 23, 2009 - Joseph W. Shea III '74 was the College of Law's featured speaker on Monday, March 23, 2009. Mr. Shea was named 2008 Outstanding Chase College of Law Alumnus at the NKU Alumni Banquet on February 6, 2009. The topic of Mr. Shea's presentation was 'The Art of Lawyering.' His remarks related to both advocacy and transactional practice. Mr. Shea's presentation was co-sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Advocacy, the Chase Student Advocacy Society, the Transactional Law Practice Center, and the Transactional Law Practice Student Group. More than 130 Chase students and faculty attended the presentation.

Mr. Shea is a highly-regarded legal practitioner and is well-known throughout the Kentucky and Ohio legal communities. He served the Ohio Supreme Court as its chief bar examiner, was elected the youngest president ever of the Ohio Justice Association, and serves nationally as a bar examiner in the field of Civil Litigation. He has authored several books including an annual publication of his widely-used courtroom evidence manual. He is the principal in the Cincinnati-based law firm Shea & Associates.

Mr. Shea's peers have voted him as one of the top 100 lawyers in Ohio or top 50 in Cincinnati annually since 2004. He is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and Society of International Barristers. He holds various record verdicts and outcomes. He received the 2008 Ohio State Bar Association's (OSBA) Ritter Award, its highest commendation, given annually to the Ohio attorney who has obtained the highest level of professionalism, integrity, and ethics in the practice of law.

Mr. Shea also believes in giving back. Years ago, he became concerned that smaller firms could not afford access to powerful online legal research sites. Using his own resources, he pioneered the idea of providing online legal research resources directly through state bar associations. In the late 1990s, he partnered with the OSBA to offer its members access to the online libraries as a free membership benefit. It was an immediate success. Today, 28 state bar associations, including the Kentucky Bar Association, offer members free unlimited access to the service. Casemaker libraries have saved attorneys and their clients millions of dollars.

The Casemaker libraries now include rules, codes, case and statutory law for all 50 states and the federal system. Casemaker currently contains over 13 million legal documents. More than 400,000 lawyers have access to Casemaker and in the past year over 300 million documents have been retrieved.