Candidate for
Judge; Ohio State Court of Appeals; District 1; 6 Year Term Starting 2/9/07

Judge Mark Painter was elected to the Court of Appeals in 1994 and re-elected without opposition in 2000. He previously served on the Hamilton County Municipal Court for 13 years. At 34, he was one of the youngest judges ever in Hamilton County.

A Cincinnati native, Judge Painter attended the University of Cincinnati, where he was elected Student Body President in 1969. He earned a BA in 1970 and a Juris Doctor degree in 1973. He practiced law for nine years before becoming a judge, mostly with a firm that later became part of Thompson Hine.

Judge Painter is recognized as an outstanding legal scholar. As a municipal court judge, he was the most-published trial judge in the state. To date more than 340 of Judge Painter's decisions have been published nationally, making him one of the most-published judges in Ohio history.

His opinions have been cited as precedent more than 2,500 times in legal encyclopedias, treatises, law reviews, and other cases. And one of his opinions was named one of the six best in the nation for 2005.

Judge Painter is the author of Ohio Driving Under the Influence Law, now in its 15th edition, the only textbook on DUI in Ohio. He is coauthor of another legal treatise, Ohio Appellate Practice. He has written three law review articles, 93 articles for other journals, Internet biographies of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, William Howard Taft, and Warren Harding, and a biography, William Howard Taft: President and Chief Justice, published in 2004.

His book on plain legal writing, The Legal Writer: 30 Rules for the Art of Legal Writing, was published in 2002, and sold out within a year. The Legal Writer 2nd Edition: 40 Rules for the Art of Legal Writing was published in 2003 and a third edition came out in 2005. He writes a monthly column on legal writing for Lawyers Weekly USA.

As an Adjunct Professor of Law at the U.C. College of Law since 1990, Judge Painter taught agency and partnership for 12 years and now teaches advanced legal writing. He also teaches legal writing, DUI law, appellate practice, and legal ethics to judges and lawyers throughout the country. He has lectured at more than 150 seminars for, among many others, the Ohio Judicial College, the Ohio State Bar Association, Professional Education Systems Institute, and the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.

Judge Painter has served as a Trustee of the Cincinnati Freestore/Foodbank, the Cincinnati Bar Association, the Mary Jo Brueggeman Scholarship Fund, the Friends of the William Howard Taft Birthplace, and the Citizens School Committee.

Judge Painter was born in Norwood, grew up in Blue Ash, and has lived in the Clifton Heights-Fairview neighborhood of Cincinnati for the last 40 years. He and his wife, Sue Ann Painter, were married in 1986.