Rick M. Schoenfield earned a BA and a JD from Northwestern University. He has been a trial and appellate lawyer for over 40 years. This includes successfully litigating for victims of mass toxic torts and for victims of ground and groundwater pollution. A highlight of his career was taking a case pro bono, after it was lost in the federal court of appeals, and winning a unanimous decision in the Supreme Court. Rick is the co-author of The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Negotiating Course and of Legal Negotiations: Getting Maximum Results. He also taught negotiations at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

More recently, Rick authored the critically acclaimed book, The Soldiers Fell Like Autumn Leaves: The Battle of the Wabash, the United States’ Greatest Defeat in the Wars Against Indigenous Peoples. For the first time, Rick explains that America’s first war after independence was a war to determine the fate of the vast forest eco-system which covered nearly all of Ohio and Indiana. That affects us to this day. For settlement meant deforestation and the loss of bio-diversity, and for Native American tribes the loss of their homeland. 

It was Rick’s deep concern for the environment that convinced him to partner with Ray in this project, rather than to just provide legal help to a friend. Rick’s love of wildlife and wildlife photography has led him to travel to the Malay Peninsula and Borneo with the Rainforest Trust, to U.S. National Parks, to South America, and to be planning his fifth trip to Africa.