John

P.

Long

John Long was raised in Washington Park, Illinois; Champaign, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; East St. Louis, Illinois; Cape Girardeau, Missouri; and Troy, Illinois. His father worked for the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which allowed his father and his family to move around and see different areas of the country.

He attended University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He majored in Physics, graduated magna cum laude and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics. He enrolled in the St. Louis University School of Law in 1972. He graduated from law school in 1975. He graduated magna cum laude and was the Valedictorian of his law school class.

He worked one year as a law clerk for Appellate Justice George J. Moran, Sr. on the Appellate Court of Illinois for the Fifth Judicial District, which Appellate Court sits in Mount Vernon, Illinois.

Appellate Justice George J. Moran, Sr. encouraged him to begin his own law practice because, in Justice Moran’s view, all the young lawyers who work for large law firms seem to have been “stamped out with cookie cutters.” He opened his first law office in Lebanon, Illinois, shortly after Christmas, 1976. He practiced law in Lebanon for seven years, until 1983. In 1983, he moved his law practice to Troy, Illinois, and continued working as a sole practitioner until 1987.

In 1987, he obtained a position as an associate attorney in the law firm of Sterling & Stanley, P.C. He learned a great deal from Attorney Harry J. Sterling, but left that law firm in 1989 to return to his solo office in Troy, Illinois.

He then continued working at his law office in Troy until January 2007, at which time he began to work with Belsheim & Bruckert in O’Fallon, Illinois.

He is a self-published author of two volumes concerning Abraham Lincoln’s reported cases before the Illinois Supreme Court. The name of the first volume is The Law of Illinois, Volume I: Lincoln’s Cases Before the Illinois Supreme Court, From His Entry Into the Practice of Law Until His Entry Into Congress. The name of the second volume is The Law of Illinois, Volume II: Lincoln’s Cases Before the Illinois SupremeCourt, From His Return to the Practice of Law Until His Return to Politics. He is now working on completing the final volume, which will cover Lincoln’s cases before the Illinois Supreme Court from 1854 through 1860.