LEGAL WRITING Jim Layton
James R. Layton joined Tueth Keeney Cooper Mohan Jackstadt in 2017, where he leads the firm’s appellate practice group and is part of the firm’s commercial, employment litigation, and education groups. He represents public entities and businesses in matters ranging from state taxation to the constitutionality of statutes.
Mr. Layton joined Tueth Keeney after serving as Missouri’s first Solicitor General. In that role, he supervised hundreds of appeals handled by assistant attorneys general in all Missouri appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. And he handled many appeals himself, addressing state and federal constitutional issues, state taxation, and Missouri administrative law. He has argued more than 90 times before the Missouri Supreme Court and four times before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mr. Layton graduated from Brigham Young University and its J. Reuben Clark Law School, both magna cum laude. He began his legal career as a law clerk to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Judge Daniel M. Friedman. He then practiced law with Vinson & Elkins and was an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia. From 1996 until 2017, he taught courses in appellate advocacy, state constitutional law, and other subjects as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Mr. Layton was a founder and served as President of both the Elwood L. Thomas American Inn of Court and the Bar Association of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He was Chair of the American Bar Association’s Council of Appellate Lawyers, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers. He has been honored with the Missouri Bar Foundation’s Spurgeon Smithson Award for having “rendered outstanding service toward the increase and diffusion of justice among men,” and as a “Distinguished Non-Alumnus” by the University of Missouri Law School.
