Law School Awards Degrees

Carlisle, PA (May 17, 2004) — The Penn State Dickinson School of Law awarded 175 Juris Doctor and four Master of Laws degrees at the Class of 2004 Commencement Ceremony held Saturday, May 15. The ceremony took place on the lawn in front of Old West on the Dickinson College campus.

Reid Weingarten, a graduate of the class of 1975, was the event's keynote speaker. Weingarten is a partner with the Washington , D.C., based law firm of Steptoe & Johnson LLP and is head of the firm's white collar crime defense group. Prior to joining the firm, Weingarten served as a trial attorney for the Public Integrity Section of the United States Department of Justice and as a deputy district attorney for Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

In recent years, Weingarten has been the lead defense attorney in some of the highest profile political and corporate criminal prosecutions, including WorldCom, Enron, Rite Aid and Tyco. He represents clients in complex criminal matters in both state and federal courts at the pre-trial, trial and post-trial stages, including cases involving public corruption, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, bank fraud, bribery, government procurement fraud, antitrust, health care fraud and tax and securities fraud.

He has gained national recognition for his representation of individuals such as Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown; Secretary of Agriculture Michael Espy; former Teamsters President Ron Carey; Treasury Department Chief of Staff Joshua Steiner; Charlie Trie; Pauline Kanchanalak; and clients involved in the Archer Daniels Midland, Drexel, Salomon Brothers, Ill Wind, BCCI, G.E./Israel, FDA/generic drug, tobacco, House Bank, and Columbia HCA investigations.

Weingarten has served, by special appointment, as special counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, to head the "October Surprise" investigation in 1992; associate independent counsel in the Iran-Contra affair in 1988 as lead counsel in the prosecution of Major General Richard V. Secord; and special prosecutor, United States Attorney's office for the District of Alaska, for US v. Dischner, et. al. in 1988.

Weingarten was inducted in the fall of 1995 as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He serves as a council member of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section and served for two terms as chairman of the White Collar Crime Committee. He also teaches courses on public corruption and professional responsibility as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Weingarten is also the chairman and co-founder, along with Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, of a non-profit program, See Forever Foundation, which is designed to assist juvenile offenders in rehabilitation to prevent recidivism.

View pictures from 2004 Commencement