Monica J. Allen, J.D., can count exactly on one hand the number of ways she’s been associated with the University.
She earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and a law degree here. She was an adjunct professor in the School of Law.
And now, to complete the quintet, Allen has been brought back as assistant vice chancellor and senior counsel in the Office of Executive Vice Chancellor & General Counsel. She has been a partner at the St. Louis law firm Haar & Woods since 2002.
“Monica offers Washington University a marvelous array of legal and administrative talents,” said Michael R. Cannon, J.D., executive vice chancellor and general counsel. “She’s a remarkably astute and thoughtful negotiator, a consummate and cool-headed strategist, and she brings an exceptional and especially welcome depth to the University’s important litigation efforts.
“As her ‘prior lives’ here at the University reflect, she’s already made a deep commitment to the multiple missions of the University, and we are very fortunate indeed to have her sage counsel and outstanding expertise ‘just down the hall.'”
Allen earned bachelor’s (1980) and master’s (1985) degrees, both in comparative literature in Arts & Sciences, from the University. After earning the master’s, she started working at the St. Louis Science Center as an outreach coordinator from 1986-89, where she coordinated the center’s education outreach program, including program development, staff supervision and budget management.
She earned a juris doctoris in 1992, after serving as the primary articles editor for the Law Quarterly and graduating second in the class of 223.
Allen clerked for Judge Jean C. Hamilton in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri from 1992-94, where she drafted district court opinions and bench memoranda and managed a court docket of approximately 250 cases.
That was followed by stints in St. Louis with the law firm Kohn, Shands, Elbert, Gianoulakis and Giljum (1994-95) and the Federal Reserve Bank (1995-97), where she was responsible for litigation management, personnel issues, contract negotiation and providing guidance to the Department of Supervision and Regulation regarding banking laws and regulations.
In 1997, she joined Haar & Woods as an associate before becoming partner in January 2002. There Allen served as senior counsel in a wide array of commercial, regulatory, criminal defense and employment litigation matters.
She also became an adjunct professor at the School of Law, where she taught “Comparative Professional Ethics: Law and Medicine” and “Pretrial Practice and Procedure.”