Victor Schwartz is a Partner in the Washington office of the Kansas City-based law firm of Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P., and chairs its Public Policy Group. The focus of the practice is to integrate litigation, government affairs and public relations. Mr. Schwartz has an active appellate practice, and advises product manufacturers on liability issues.

Mr. Schwartz was a Professor and Dean at the University of Cincinnati College of Law prior to entering the full time practice of law. He currently serves on the College’s Board of Visitors.

He served as Chairman of the Federal Inter-Agency Task Force on Product Liability at the Department of Commerce, and received the Secretary of Commerce’s Award for Professional Excellence. He helped draft the Uniform Product Liability Act and the Risk Retention Act.

For more than two decades, Mr. Schwartz has been co-author of the most widely used torts casebook in the United States, Prosser, Wade and Schwartz’s Torts (11th ed. 2005). He also is author of the leading text, Comparative Negligence.

Mr. Schwartz is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and served on the Advisory Committee to the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability, and Apportionment of Liability Projects. He continues to serve on the Advisory Committee to the Restatement (Third) of Torts: General Principles. He was inducted as a Life Member of the ALI in 1997.

Mr. Schwartz co-chairs the Civil Justice Task Force of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Sought by print and broadcast media, Mr. Schwartz is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times, and has appeared on Oprah, 60 Minutes, and network news programs. He and his Public Policy Group colleagues were the recipients of the Phillip Burton Award for Outstanding Legal Scholarship. Mr. Schwartz was awarded the Jeffersonian Award by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of more than 2,000 state legislators. In light of his accomplishments, The Legal Times of Washington recently named Mr. Schwartz one of Washington’s Top 30 “Visionary” lawyers from over the past 30 years, The National Law Journal named him, for the third time, as one of the 100 most influential attorneys in the United States, and Washingtonian magazine has twice named him one of the top government relations specialists in the Nation’s capital.

Mr. Schwartz obtained his A.B. summa magna laude from Boston University and J.D. magna cum laude from Columbia Law School. He is a member of the bars of New York, Ohio and the District of Columbia.