Trial Practice

Jamie Cooper headshot

Jamie C. Cooper Assistant Professor of Law

Professor Cooper joins the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Law after practicing law in the areas of family law, criminal defense, and juvenile justice for 14 years.  Cooper has extensive trial experience and has successfully argued cases before the Nebraska Supreme Court and Nebraska Court of Appeals.  Prior to joining the faculty, Cooper served as an adjunct professor for the College of Law, teaching Pretrial Litigation.  She holds a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law and a B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Outside of the classroom, you can find Professor Cooper on a yoga mat. She is a certified yoga teacher trainer and teaches community yoga classes. She enjoys international travel and gardening. Cooper sits on several boards and committees and has held a number of leadership roles in her community.

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David Dirgo Adjunct Law Professor

David Dirgo is a Career Law Clerk at the Nebraska Supreme Court, U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska.

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Chelsi Hayden headshot

Chelsi Hayden Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of Legal Research and Writing Program

Professor Chelsi Hayden joined the law faculty in 2017. She is directing and teaching in the Legal Research and Writing program and teaching advanced legal writing courses. Her research focuses on Evidence, Legal Methods, Legal Writing, and Learning Theories. In addition, she often writes for the Kansas bar.

Prior to coming to Nebraska Law, Professor Hayden was a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Kansas, where she taught predominately litigation focused classes—Evidence, Lawyering Skills, Advanced Legal Writing, and legal-skills simulation workshops.  

In addition to her academic pursuits, Professor Hayden served, or continues to serve, on the Federal Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel, the Emily Taylor Center for Women & Gender Equity, the Kansas Land Trust, the Kansans Advancing Women Political Action Committee, and the Willow Domestic Violence Center. Professor Hayden continues with representation in court, most often in an amicus curia.

Before entering academia, Professor Hayden served as chambers counsel to Judge Carlos Murguia of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas and was an associate in business litigation for Shook, Hardy & Bacon in Kansas City, Missouri. She has extensive experience in civil and criminal law, litigating in both state and federal courts.

Professor Hayden received bachelors of art degrees in Sociology and Criminology from the University of Kansas. She graduated Order of the Coif from the University of Kansas School of Law.

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Kevin Ruser

Kevin Ruser Richard and Margaret Larson Professor of Law and M.S. Hevelone Professor of Law

Professor Ruser joined the Law College faculty in June, 1985, as a supervising attorney in the Civil Clinical Law Program. He received a B.A. from UNL in 1975, with an English major and a history minor. Professor Ruser attended UNL College of Law and received his J.D. in 1979. He worked for Western Nebraska Legal Services from 1979-1985; the first two years were spent in the Grand Island branch office, and the last four years were spent in the Scottsbluff office, where he was managing attorney. Professor Ruser is the Director of Clinical Programs at the College of Law and teaches in the Civil Clinic and the Immigration Clinic. He also co-administers the Litigation Skills Program of Concentrated Study.  He is a member of the Nebraska State Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the Clinical Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and the Clinical Legal Educators Association. He is currently Co-Chair of the District Court Forms Subcommittee of the Nebraska Supreme Court Self-Represented Litigants Committee, a member of the Nebraska Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission, a member of the Nebraska Supreme Court’s Civil Justice Reform Committee, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Office of Public Guardian.

Ruser has worked abroad on law reform and legal education reform projects. In the fall of 2015, he worked with the Iliria University Law faculty in Pristina, Kosovo to help them design an experiential learning course on arbitration. From 2012 to 2015, he was involved in a project in which he evaluated and made recommendations for curricular changes in the Masters Level clinical programs at the University of Pristina Law Faculty and Iliria University Law Faculty in Pristina, Kosovo. From 2000 to 2005, he was involved with law and legal education reform efforts in several countries of the former Yugoslavia, most notably Montenegro and Serbia. From 2010 to 2012, he was, along with Professor Steven Schmidt, principal investigator of a USAID-funded grant to help teach oral advocacy techniques to faculty at the law school of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. These skills are needed by Mexican law students and practitioners to enable them to function effectively in Mexico's new oral adversarial system, which was created by recent constitutional reforms in Mexico.

Ruser's research interests lie primarily in the area of “crimmigration” – the intersection of immigration and criminal law. In August, 2012, he published an article in The Habeas, which is the monthly newsletter of the Nebraska Criminal Defense Attorney’s Association, reviewing and analyzing recent decisions by the Nebraska Supreme Court in the area of post-conviction “crimmigration” cases. Also in 2012, he made substantial updates to The Nebraska Criminal Practitioner’s Guide to Representing Non-Citizens in State Court Proceedings, which he first published in 2008. The Guide's purpose is to background criminal law practitioners in immigration law, in order to enable them to effectively advise their non-citizen clients of possible immigration consequences to criminal proceedings in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Padilla v. Kentucky holding that non-citizens have a 6th Amendment right to be advised by their defense counsel of immigration consequences in criminal cases. Ruser developed a 4-hour seminar on "crimmigration" issues and presented this seminar in each of Nebraska's 12 district court judicial districts in 2011 and 2012.

In 2011, Greg McLawsen, Julia McLawsen and Ruser co-authored an article entitled Demonstrating Psychological Hardship: A Statistical Study of Psychological Evaluations in Hardship Waivers of Inadmissibility. The article, which was published in the January 1, 2011 issue of Bender's Immigration Bulletin, reviewed decisions of the Administrative Appeals Office (AA0) to see how helpful it is for non-citizens to submit psychological evaluations with their applications for hardship waivers to certain grounds of inadmissibility. Ruser has written other practice-related manuals and guides, the most recent of which are in the following areas: Chapter 7 consumer bankruptcy (2012); powers of attorney, guardianships and conservatorships (2015); and landlord/tenant law (2014).

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Steve Schmidt

Steve Schmidt Associate Professor of Law and Courtesy Associate Professor of Forensic Science

Professor Schmidt joined the faculty in 2007. He received his B.S. degree in 1987 and spent the next eight years as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps. He received his M.A. degree in 1994 and his J.D. in 1998. Following law school, he worked in the Lancaster County Attorney's Office. As a Deputy County Attorney, he primarily prosecuted sexual assault and domestic violence cases, but also handled a wide variety of other felony and misdemeanor cases.

Currently, Professor Schmidt is heavily involved in an on-going project with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to assist as Mexico transitions its criminal justice system from a mixed inquisitorial to an oral adversarial model. He spends several weeks each semester in Mexico City teaching advocacy skills and working on that project.

He is an active member of the bar, serving as the Program Chair/President Elect for Inns of Court and as a member of the Lincoln Bar Association, having previously served as its president. In 2010, Professor Schmidt was presented the Warren K. Urbom Mentor Award by the Robert Van Pelt American Inn of Court. When not working, Professor Schmidt enjoys spending time outside - riding his motorcycle, fishing or enjoying time with his sons.

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Professor Ryan SUllivan

Ryan Sullivan Robert J. Kutak Distinguished Professor of Law

Professor Sullivan joined the Law College faculty in August, 2013, as a supervising attorney in the Civil Clinical Law Program. He received his B.A. from Colorado State University-Pueblo while completing his enlistment in the U.S. Army, majoring in business administration. Thereafter he attended California University of Pennsylvania where he obtained his Master’s in Health Sciences. After a career in the fitness industry, he enrolled at UNL College of Law where he served as an editor of the Nebraska Law Review, the Chair of the Moot Court Board, and a member of the National Trial Team. Following graduation, Professor Sullivan joined the law firm of Kinsey, Rowe, Becker and Kistler where he practiced in the area of general civil litigation.

As the Director of the Civil Clinic, Professor Sullivan supervises student attorneys providing legal services to veterans and underserved populations in the areas of tenant rights, debt collection defense, criminal record rehabilitation, estate planning, family law, and other civil matters.   Professor Sullivan also manages the Advance Directive Clinic (ADC) Project, wherein Civil Clinic students provide basic estate planning services to senior citizens in rural and semi-rural Communities around the State of Nebraska.  Professor Sullivan also supervises several outreach projects within the Civil Clinic, including the Clean Slate Project, the Veterans Advocacy Project, the Tenants’ Rights Project and the Family Law Project. 

He is a member of the Nebraska State Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the Clinical Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and the Clinical Legal Education Association.

A Nebraska native, Professor Sullivan is an avid Husker fan, and enjoys cycling, woodworking and furniture restoration.


Watch to see how Professor Sullivan is providing representation for families facing eviction. 

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Korey Taylor headshot

Korey T. Taylor Assistant Professor of Law

Professor Korey Taylor joined the College of Law faculty in 2023. Prior to entering academia, Professor Taylor spent thirteen years as an Assistant Public Defender in Omaha, Nebraska and Orlando, Florida where he practiced in criminal and juvenile parental rights law, including thirty-five jury trials. He has previous corporate experience with Sidley Austin LLP, a top 20 international law firm, and Fortune 500 companies J.P. Morgan Chase, Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson. Professor Taylor is licensed to practice law in Texas, New York, Florida and Nebraska.

Born in the Chicago area, but raised in Houston, Professor Taylor earned a B.S. and M.B.A from Florida A&M University, Summa Cum Laude, with concentrations in Business Administration and Finance, a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where he was a Levy Scholar and served as a Senior Editor of The Journal of International Law, and a Certificate of Business and Public Policy with a Real Estate emphasis from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Taylor is the current President of the Midlands (Black) Bar Association (2020 – present), serves on the Executive Council of the Omaha Bar Association and is Chair of the 2023 Nebraska State Bar Association (NSBA) Annual Meeting and a legislative Delegate in the NSBA House of Delegates. Professor Taylor also currently serves as a board member of Community Alliance, an Omaha-based non-profit that focuses on mental health and wellness of in need community members, and by appointment of the Nebraska Supreme Court as a member of the Committee on Equity and Fairness, along with his service in other organizations. Professor Taylor was nominated and selected as the recipient of the 2023 NSBA Diversity Award in recognition for his leadership as President of the Midlands Bar Association and for his efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in Nebraska’s legal community through his service with various bar, student and minority professional development focused organizations and groups.

Professor Taylor will be teaching Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure (Investigation), Advanced Criminal Procedure (Adjudication) and other courses at Nebraska Law. His initial research interests include diversity and inclusion in the law, profession and judicial appointments and special topics in crime and due process.

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