Joseph Conley has been a trial and appellate attorney for over thirty years and has experience in nearly every substantive area and type of forum – jury trials, bench trials, arbitrations, and mediations. He has argued or briefed appeals in more than a half-dozen states, several courts of appeals, and the United States Supreme Court (briefs). His trial experience includes cases involving product liability, employment law, broker-dealer disputes, construction law, claims involving breaches of fiduciary duty and fraud, antitrust, patent infringement, and general commercial and business disputes, including class actions and derivative suits. He also served a term as a Special Assistant Attorney General for the Kentucky Attorney General. He has been named a Kentucky Super Lawyer in 2009-2010 and 2013-2018 in the field of business litigation.

Mr. Conley is a 1977 graduate of the University of Kentucky Law School, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif, articles editor of the Kentucky Law Journal, and a member of the national moot court team.

During the course of his career, he has held several leadership positions in professional organizations. He has been chairman of the section of litigation of the Kentucky Bar Association, and a member of the Bar’s Ethics Committee. He has been president of the Kentucky Defense Counsel, a former long-time board member of the Northern Kentucky Legal Aid Society, and a founding member of Access to Justice, the coordinating body of several of Kentucky’s legal services agencies.

In addition, Mr. Conley has a strong background in legal education. He has been a teaching fellow at the University of Illinois, a full-time faculty member at the Louisiana State University Law Center, where he taught courses in Civil Procedure, Conflicts, Corporations, and Antitrust, and was a long-time adjunct faculty member at the University of Cincinnati Law School, where he taught an annual seminar in Complex Litigation. He has authored articles in the Louisiana Law Review (on Antitrust and Bankruptcy) and is the author of a chapter on claim and issue preclusion in a handbook for Kentucky attorneys on post-trial proceedings.

Before helping found Raines, Buechel, Conley, & Dusing — and his own firm before that – Mr. Conley was a litigation partner in Greater Cincinnati’s largest law firm. In 2017, he and Edward Buechel formed Buechel & Conley, joining Of Counsel with Leonard Law. He regularly practices before courts in both Kentucky and southwestern Ohio.

REPRESENTATIVE REPORTED CASES

Parchman & Oyler v. Crawford, 68 Ohio App. 2d 109 (1980) (dual agency); Fischer v. Heckerman, 772 S.W.2d 642 (Ky. App. 1989) (will contest); Hagen v. Richardson-Merrell, 697 F.Supp. 334 (N.D. Ill 1988 (products liability – summary judgment practice); Foiles v. Richardson-Merrell Nat., 730 F. Supp. 108 (N.D. Ill. 1989) (removal jurisdiction); Bernhardt v. Richardson-Merrell, 892 F.2d 440 (5th Cir. 1990)(products liability – summary of judgment practice); Gadsen v. Newman, 807 F.Supp. 1412 (C.D. Ill 1992) (consumer fraud); Blair v. General Motors, 838 F.Supp. 1196 (W.D.Ky. 1993) (auto dealer termination); Caro v. Procter & Gamble Co., 22 Cal.Rptr.2d 419 (Cal.App. 4th Dist. 1993) (consumer class certification); Blum v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., 560 A.2d 212 (Pa Super. 1989) (drug product liability); Procter & Gamble v. Staples, 551 So.2d 949 (Ala. 1989) (product liability); Turpin v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., 736 F.Supp. 737 (E.D.Ky. 1990) (drug product liability); Pennington v. Western Atlas, 202 F.3d 902 (6th Cir. 2000) (age and ERISA discrimination); Wilder v. Absorption, 107 S.W.3d 181 (Ky. 2003) (choice of forum clauses); Davis v. Fischer, 231 S.W. 3d 767 (Ky. App. 2007) (products liability – construction).