Personal Summary

Professor Howell is the School of Law's Legal Writing Director. Professor Howell teaches Appellate Advocacy, Legal Analysis, andLegal Writing, and coaches the Law School's National Moot Court team. He joined the faculty in 1996 after practicing civil litigation with a Missoula law firm for four years. Before graduating with high honors from The University of Montana School of Law in 1992, he worked as a newspaper reporter and editor, receiving several awards for investigative reporting.

He is the chair of the editorial board of “Trial Trends,” the magazine of the Montana Trial Lawyers Association, and also serves on MTLA’s Amicus Committee.. Outside interests include poker, cooking, and golf, as well as hiking, fishing, and camping with his wife, Ellen Leahy, and his children, Emily and Sam.

Courses Taught

• Legal Writing

Publications

Deconstructing CRAC:  Teaching Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in a Legal-Writing Program, 14 Scribes J. Leg. Writing 53 (2012).

Once Upon a Time in the West:  Citizens United, Caperton and the War of the Copper Kings,  73 Mont. L. Rev. 25 (2012).

“Purely the Creature of the Inventive Genius of the Court”: State ex rel. Whiteside and the Creation and Evolution of the Montana Supreme Court’s Unique and Controversial Writ of Supervisory Control, 69 Mont. L. Rev. 1 (2008).

Environmental Crimes:  The Boom in "Busting" Corporations and Their Responsible Officers, 16 Am. J. Trial Advoc. 417 (1992).