Overview
John’s practice includes representing public and private-sector employers, K-12 public schools, charter schools, and colleges and universities on a variety of employment matters including discrimination claims, leave laws, accommodations, as well as education matters including Title IX, special education, curriculum requirements, and student discipline.
As a former in-house attorney for a large Charter school network, John is experienced in counseling school clients on a wide range of topics including board governance and business matters, student data and privacy, employee relations, internal investigations, Freedom of Information Act and Open Meetings Act concerns, student expulsion hearings, drafting and implementation of policies, and special education/disability matters. John regularly attends IEP and 504 meetings and has experience defending school districts in due process hearings before ISBE appointed hearing officers. John enjoys working with school district clients to come up with creative solutions to everyday challenges that both address the district’s needs while balancing the district’s mission and commitment to its students and community.
John also brings his experience from working as a Labor and Employment attorney at a large law firm, where he specialized in representing private-sector employers in employment matters. Specifically, John has experience representing employers in trade secret and restrictive covenant litigations in which he has both successfully brought and defended claims for injunctive relief. John is also experienced in representing clients before state and federal courts in multiple jurisdictions and administrative agencies in actions involving discrimination, harassment, wrongful discharge, wage and hour, defamation, and breach of contract. And, his litigation experience includes bench and jury trials as well as appellate work.
Before graduating from the University of Notre Dame Law School, John was a student representative for the Chicago branch of The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, President of the Education Law Forum, and a staff member on the Journal of College and University Law—a law review in cooperation with the National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA) dedicated to the law of higher education. John also completed the Firm’s Legal Education for the Advancement of Diversity and Scholarship (LEADS) Fellowship Program in 2015 and 2016 and was an extern at the Chicago District Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Prior to law school, John graduated from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana with a Bachelor of Arts in the Teaching of Spanish (K-12).
John is a member of the Chicago Bar Association and the Illinois Council of School Attorneys. In his spare time, John enjoys cooking, reading, playing pickleball, visiting breweries and distilleries, and travelling the world.