Marissa L. Downs

Marissa L. Downs

Marissa L. Downs
Associate
Phone: 312.521.2632 vCard
Fax: 312.521.2532
mdowns@muchshelist.com

PRACTICE GROUP

AT WORK

Marissa L. Downs represents manufacturers, financial institutions, trustees and other clients in a broad range of complex commercial litigation matters, including international and domestic contract disputes, post-RICO proceedings, bankruptcies and reorganizations. She has experience in all aspects of trial preparation, including depositions, jury selection and voir dire, as well as the drafting of research memoranda, discovery requests and various pleadings. Marissa also represents clients in arbitration proceedings.

IN THE PROFESSION

As part of her ongoing commitment to pro bono legal services, Marissa recently defended a community services organization from a baseless discrimination claim, successfully petitioned the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service to grant legal status to an indigent client, and served as second-chair trial counsel in a complex prisoner rights case. Following law school, she worked as a law clerk for Justice Robert Eastaugh of the Alaska Supreme Court and as an intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in The Hague, Netherlands, where she researched, drafted and edited judgments in two war crimes cases on appeal.

While in law school, Marissa was a member of the National Trial Team, served as a Senior Articles Editor for the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, and interned in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the Office of the State Appellate Defender (Illinois), and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. Before entering law school, Marissa was an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense and a Hart Fellow with the International Rescue Committee in Rwanda.

BACKGROUND

Northwestern University School of Law
J.D., cum laude, 2008

University of North Carolina
B.A., with highest honors, 2001

Marissa is admitted to practice in Illinois and before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.