James L. DeAno attended John Marshall Law School where he served on the Law Review and graduated with high honors in 1981. He worked for the Illinois Supreme Court research department from 1982 until 1984 when he joined the insurance defense firm of O'Reilly & Cunningham which by 1997 evolved into the firm of Norton Mancini Weiler & DeAno. In June of 2006 he joined with Laura Scarry to create DeAno & Scarry, a law firm which specializes in insurance defense, legal malpractice and municipal defense, primarily in DuPage and Kane Counties and the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois. Mr. DeAno has more than twenty years experience representing defendants in civil litigation in cases before the United States Supreme Court, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the Illinois Supreme and Appellate Courts as well as federal and Illinois trial courts.
His articles have been published in the Illinois Bar Journal and the Journal of the Illinois Association of Defense Trial Counsel and in 2005 he was appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to the Illinois Civil Jury Instructions Committee. He became a certified arbitrator in 1995 and continues to serve as an arbitrator in DuPage County . He served four terms as General Counsel of the DuPage County Bar Association and was a member of its Judiciary Committee from 1991 to 1994. He currently serves on the Amicus Committee of the Illinois Defense Counsel and is a former faculty member of the Chicago Kent College of Law annual conference on Section 1983 Civil Rights Litigation. He has lectured and instructed attorneys and insurance representatives on topics including trial practice, discovery and damages.
