Derek S. Witte, Professor

Biography

Derek S. Witte Professor B.A., cum laude, Marian College 1999 J.D., summa cum laude, John Marshall Law School 2002 Contact by e-mail

Before joining Cooley Law School, Professor Witte was a litigator in Chicago, Ill., and then Grand Rapids, Mich.

At Jenner & Block LLP in Chicago, Witte litigated nationwide consumer fraud class actions, trade secret disputes, insurance coverage and commercial disputes for Fortune 500 corporations. He obtained a $1.1 million jury award in an Illinois Hate Crimes case that he represented pro bono.

At Miller Johnson in Grand Rapids, Professor Witte worked in complex commercial litigation, including cases involving trade secrets, copyright, trade dress, unfair competition, consumer fraud, e-discovery, civil RICO, contract disputes, and Uniform Commercial Code litigation. He also successfully vacated a conviction against a prisoner who was tortured into confessing to two murders he did not commit.

At John Marshall, where he graduated third out of 225 graduates, he was the Lead Articles Editor for The John Marshall Law Review and was a team member for Moot court and Trial Advocacy. Professor Witte was also on the Willem C. Vis International Arbitration Competition Moot Court Team in Vienna, Austria. He later served as John Marshall’s Trial Advocacy Coach for the Willem C. Vis International Arbitration Competition in 2003 and 2004.

He was a PILI Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School’s MacArthur Justice Center in 2002 and an extern for the Hon. Robert W. Gettleman, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 2001.

In 2007, Professor Witte was featured in Grand Rapids Magazine and co-authored an article on e-discovery for the Michigan Bar Journal.

At Cooley, Professor Witte teaches Contracts I.

Bibliography

• Articles
• Books and Chapters in Books
• Presentations

Articles

Derek Witte, Nelson P. Miller, Tonya Krause-Phelan, Joni Larson, Kim O'Leary, and Vicki Eggers, Using a Faculty Inquiry Process to Examine Student Responsibility for Learning, 61 J. Legal Educ. 280 (2011).

Derek S. Witte, Your Opponent Does Not Need a Friend Request to See Your Page: Social Networking Sites and Electronic Discovery, 41 McGeorge L.Rev. 4 (2010).

Derek S. Witte, The Bear Hug that is crushing debt-burdened Americans: Why overzealous regulation of the debt-settlement industry harms the consumers it means to protect, 14 Tex.Rev. L.& Pol. 2, 277 (Spring 2010).

Derek S. Witte and Nelson P. Miller, Helping Law Firm Luddites Cross the Digital Divide--Arguments for Mastering Law Practice Technology, 12 SMU Science & Tech. L.Rev. 113 (2009).

Derek S. Witte and D. Andrew Portinga , E-Discovery and the New Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 86 Mich. B.J. 36 (March 2007).

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Books and Chapters in Books

Derek S. Witte. Insurance Coverage Disputes, authored by John H. Mathias, JR., John D. Shugrue & Thomas A. Marrinson. New York: Law Journal Press (1996) 2003-2005 Supplements.

Derek S. Witte. E-Discovery. Ann Arbor: The Institute of Continuing Legal Education, (2007).

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Presentations

Derek S Witte. E-Discovery, The Institute of Continuing Legal Education. January 13, 2009.

Derek S Witte. E-Discovery, The Institute of Continuing Legal Education. October 1, 2007.

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