Justice P. Scott Neville and the Illinois Supreme Court have announced the appointment of Lester Finkle as a judge in the Eighth Subcircuit of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
Mr. Finkle is being appointed to fill the vacancy created by the election of Justice Mary L. Mikva to the First District Appellate Court. Mr. Finkle’s appointment is effective May 30, 2025, and will conclude on December 7, 2026. From 1984 to 2021, Mr. Finkle was an Assistant Public Defender in the Office of the Cook County Public Defender, filing more than 600 appellate briefs and presenting more than 50 oral arguments before the Illinois Supreme and Appellate Courts. While serving as an Assistant Public Defender, Mr. Finkle was elevated to the position of Chief of the Legal Resources Division and later served as the Chief of Staff from 2015 to 2021, where he was responsible for the budget, staffing, and development of policy. He has most recently served as an appellate practitioner at Quintairos, Prieto, Wood & Boyer, P.A. Mr. Finkle serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Law where he has taught appellate writing and oral advocacy since 1997. From 2007 to 2015, he was an adjunct professor at the Loyola University School of Law. Mr. Finkle earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and earned his Juris Doctor from the DePaul University College of Law.
His professional affiliations include the Decalogue Society, the Chicago Bar Association, the Illinois State Bar Association, and the American Bar Association. Mr. Finkle shares his life with and has been happily married to Georgia Stanek-Finkle, since 1990.
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