Robert W. Steinmetz

Rob Steinmetz is a founding partner of McConnell Van Pelt, LLC. He has over fifteen years of civil trial and appellate experience defending claims against professionals and organizations.

Mr. Steinmetz’s practice focuses primarily on the defense of professional negligence claims and related complex litigation, including legal, medical and accounting malpractice, professional licensing matters and physician peer review issues.

Mr. Steinmetz has litigated claims brought against lawyers practicing in a wide variety of underlying specialties, including patent law, contracts, commercial litigation, products liability, real estate, oil and gas, family law, probate, wrongful death, personal injury and administrative law. His diverse foundational knowledge base provides him with the unique ability to distill critical facts and law from an underlying matter in order to creatively and efficiently analyze, value and resolve claims.

Mr. Steinmetz received his Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin Law School, graduating cum laude. While at UW Law, he worked with the Wisconsin Innocence Project, where he presented a novel argument for the application of the new evidence standard to improvements in DNA testing that led to the exoneration of a Wisconsin state prisoner after 18 years of wrongful incarceration. He also spent a semester of study at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Law in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Mr. Steinmetz is admitted to practice in Colorado, Wisconsin and before the Second and Tenth Circuits. He is an active member of the Colorado Bar Association Ethics Committee, where he recently authored the recently adopted Formal Opinion 141 - Ethical Duties Arising from Data Breach, regarding Colorado lawyers’ ethical duties arising from the breach of a lawyer’s data systems.

- DISTINCTIONS -

Mr. Steinmetz has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America® in the area of legal malpractice. He was listed as a Rising Star by Colorado Super Lawyers in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Mr. Steinmetz holds the highest rating awarded by Martindale-Hubbell® Law Directory as an AV® Preeminent™ Lawyer.

- COMMUNITY Support -

Mr. Steinmetz is a member of the Colorado, Denver, and Wisconsin Bar Associations and is a member of the Colorado Bar Association Ethics Committee and the Malpractice Insurance Subcommittee of the Supreme Court Advisory Committee. He gives Continuing Legal Education lectures to his peers about identifying and resolving ethical dilemmas governed by the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct with an eye towards preventing legal malpractice claims. Mr. Steinmetz serves on the Board of Directors for the Colorado Photographic Arts Center.

Education

Boston College (B.S., Chemistry and Philosophy, 1996)

University of Wisconsin (J.D., Cum Laude, 2002)

Admissions

U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals

U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado

U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals

Colorado State Bar

Wisconsin State Bar

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a ride!”

— Hunter S. Thompson