John R. Muenster attended four years of college at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, graduating with a B.A. in 1971. He studied law at Harvard Law School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated with a Juris Doctor degree in 1975. John has devoted almost all of his legal career to criminal defense work and to civil rights lawsuits against the police.

He is admitted to practice law in Washington, California, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Mr. Muenster has served as the elected chairman of the Washington State Bar Association Criminal Law Section, an organization of over five hundred lawyers who practice criminal law in the state of Washington. Mr. Muenster was appointed by the Washington State Supreme Court to serve on the Court's task force revising jury instructions in criminal cases. He has chaired the Supreme Court's subcommittee on jury instructions for civil rights cases.

John Muenster was a founding member of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and is a member of the Washington State Association for Justice (formerly Washington State Trial Lawyers Association) and the American Trial Lawyers Association. Mr. Muenster was listed as one of the best defense lawyers in the area by the Seattle Survival Guide (Sasquatch Books, Publisher, 1990).

John's work was featured in the April, 2001 issue of Washington Law & Politics magazine. The magazine has named him a "Super Lawyer" in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

John was a featured speaker on police misconduct cases at the American Trial Lawyers Association National Convention in Boston in July of 1996. He frequently teaches at Continuing Legal Education seminars on police liability.