Mark Curriden N/A Mark S. Curriden is Director of Communications at Vinson & Elkins, LLP in Dallas, TX. He was educated and trained as a lawyer but never practiced law. Instead, Mark chose a life of journalism, book writing and lecturing. The specialty topics about which he writes and lectures include legal history, trends at the Supreme Court of the United States, the American jury system, and relationships between lawyers and journalists. He earned his B.A. from the Tennessee Temple University in 1985 and his J.D. from the Woodrow Wilson Law School in 1988. In 2000, he authored a highly-acclaimed 16-part series on the role of the American jury in resolving disputes in our nation's history. As a result of his work on that project, Mark frequently speaks to lawyer and judicial organizations across the nation about the jury system. Mark has also written regularly for the American Bar Association Journal, the Student Lawyer, Of Counsel, and other national legal and business publications. Also, in 2000, Farrar Straus & Giroux published his award- winning and national best-selling book, Contempt of Court: A Turn-of-the-Century Lynching That Launched 100 Years of Federalism. The book received overwhelmingly positive reviews from the New York Times, American Lawyer, Atlanta Constitution, and other major publications. In April 2004, he was appointed to serve on the American Bar Association's Blue Ribbon Panel on the future of the American jury system. He is a member of the ABA’s Torts Trials and Insurance Practice Section; the ABA’s Standing Committee on Public Education; TIPS' Merging Issues Committee; TIPS Publications Committee; Center for American and International Law; Society of Professional Journalists; and the Criminal Justice Journalists Association. Mark also has won several national awards for his legal journalism and two of his articles led to wrongly convicted death row inmates being set free. TL 2/11