Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, announces today that partner Stephen L. Hill, Jr., has been named to Missouri Lawyers Media’s POWER List in the White-Collar Defense category for the second year in a row. Hill, resident in the Firm’s Kansas City office, co-chairs the US White Collar and Government Investigations practice. 

The POWER List, a regular feature from Missouri Lawyers Media, examines power brokers who lead and influence various parts of the Missouri legal community. The list honors practitioners who defend their clients from adverse government actions of all sorts, whether in a court of criminal law or from an enforcement arm of a state or federal administrative agency.

Hill previously served as United States attorney for the Western District of Missouri from 1993 to 2001, Appointed by President Bill Clinton. His office obtained numerous convictions involving corruption at City Hall in Kansas City, local county courthouses and the Missouri General Assembly. Hill advised US Attorney General Janet Reno and the Justice Department on corporate prosecution and health care policies as part of his tenure on the Attorney General's Advisory Committee. He also co-developed Project Cease Fire, a nationally recognized program targeting prosecution and conviction of felons illegally possessing firearms in Kansas City and western Missouri.

During his tenure, Hill successfully argued the constitutionality of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 in United States v. Dinwiddie when the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal district court decision finding that Dinwiddie had violated the law. The Dinwiddie decision was one of the first cases in the nation to consider the then-new law's constitutionality.