About Dan Heilman

Dan Heilman Articles written 16

In four decades as a professional writer, Dan Heilman has covered subatomic particles, subterranean punk rock bands, and just about everything in between. He has experience in news reporting, features, profiles, reviews, essays, blogs and corporate communications. He’s also edited everything from in-house newsletters to daily business journals to monthly specialty magazines. He’s been a full-time freelance writer since 2010, with legal issues in Minnesota being his primary beat. He’s a regular contributor to Super Lawyers’ Minnesota edition.

Articles written by Dan Heilman

Bringing Down Trevor Cook

How John Harper III did it

At this moment, Trevor Cook sits in a federal prison cell, serving a 25-year sentence for defrauding investors in a nationwide Ponzi scheme. One of his accomplices, Christopher Pettengill, is awaiting sentencing, while three others—Jason Bo-Alan Beckman, Gerald Durand, and Patrick Kiley—went to trial in April. John Harper III, one of the Messerli & Kramer lawyers who helped put Cook behind bars, takes little satisfaction in the role played in bringing Cook to justice. “There is no …

A Steely Calm

General Mills’ Rick Palmore keeps the Pillsbury and Betty Crocker brands strong

It doesn’t take long to discover Rick Palmore’s roots. Palmore, 59, has been executive vice president, general counsel, and chief compliance and risk management officer of General Mills Inc. since 2008. That post—which carries responsibility for the packaged-food giant’s worldwide legal activities, corporate ethics and compliance, and corporate security—is the culmination of a professional odyssey that started in Pennsylvania, near a town represented in Palmore’s office in …

An Entertaining Practice

Ken Abdo rides with the band

In late March, Ken Abdo arrived home from Austin, Texas, tired but happy. Abdo, who chairs the entertainment law department at Lommen, Abdo, Cole, King & Stageberg, in Minneapolis, had spent an intense 10 days at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, checking out bands, schmoozing with colleagues, and helping coordinate a dizzying array of CLE programs about recording contracts, music licensing, interactive film and other music topics. Although the experience was exhausting, …

The Man From Medtronic

Cameron Findlay keeps the medical device company moving forward

Cameron Findlay didn’t come from a family of lawyers: His father was a dentist and his mother a welfare caseworker-turned-full-time homemaker. But he knew pretty early that he wanted to become one. “I loved Perry Mason,” says Findlay, 51, who grew up in the mid-sized Indiana city of Elkhart, tucked just under the Michigan border. “I liked to read, write, debate. My mom gave me some files from school recently, and I had written an autobiography in sixth grade in which I said I was going …

The Jazz Man

David C. Greer plays the music of old New Orleans

If you think your taste in music is old school because you’re still stuck on the Beatles, you can consider yourself on the cutting edge compared to Dayton attorney David C. Greer — and he wouldn’t have it any other way. The 68-year-old partner at Bieser Greer & Landis has a passion for practicing law, but his true love is the jazz sound of the 1920s and ’30s, the era of so-called “hot jazz” — the tightly constructed, ensemble-based style that launched the careers …

The Postman

Howard Bashman provides all the news about the appellate world in his blog ‘How Appealing’

The back alley of the Internet known as the blogosphere has a reputation for being home mostly to conspiracy-driven cranks and self-indulgent diarists. But a few blogs try to perform a public service, and Fort Washington–based appellate attorney Howard Bashman is working hard to put his blog into that category.   Bashman started his blog, “How Appealing” (www.legalaffairs.org/howappealing), in May 2002 as a way to consolidate news items relevant to appellate attorneys. Since then, …

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