Melissa Piwowar (Paralegal) works on corporate and litigation matters involving legal research, discovery and investigation, case file management and corporate maintenance.
She attended Judson College working toward a degree in Business Administration and is an AAS graduate (paralegal studies) from Elgin Community College, where she was awarded a Judge Ernest B. Akemann Scholarship and ECC Trustee Leadership Scholarship in Paralegal Studies.
Melissa is the current Assistant Editor (2010-11) and a member of the editorial board for the DCBA Brief, a magazine published by the DuPage County Bar Association. She has authored and co-authored a number of articles for the Brief and is the editor of the magazine's annual parody edition, the DCBA Grief.
Melissa is also a member of the American Society of Trial Consultants for whom she has served on a number of committees, including the Planning Committee for the 2008 Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.
She is a contributing author, providing research on changing case law and trends in jury selection for the supplements and chapter updates to Jury Selection: Strategy and Science (3d edition) by Ted A Donner and Richard Gabriel (Thomson West).
Melissa worked for ten years in sales and management prior to moving into the legal field.
As a student, she served as an Intake Volunteer for the Center for Disability and Elder Law and, as an intern under the direction of Judge Keith Brown with the Kane County Child Custody Task Force (a ground breaking project in Illinois where interns studied child custody disputes within divorce cases, documented and evaluated the work of guardians ad litem, as well as child custody evaluators in Kane County, Illinois). She also volunteered at the Kane County Judicial Center where she helped pro se litigants in family court as well as assisting individuals seeking emergency orders of protection.
