2022 Up & Coming Attorneys: Nicholas Scheiner

Greene Espel PLLP Nicholas Scheiner is an attorney who looks like an FBI agent — which makes sense considering he used to be one.

Scheiner earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in East Asian culture at the University of Florida and UCLA. He then became an FBI special agent and spent three years in New York conducting counterintelligence investigations.

But by 2012, Scheiner realized he wanted to do something more public facing. “I enjoyed my legal classes at the FBI Academy, so I decided to give law school a shot,” he said.

Law school at Stanford led to five years at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Then in 2021, Scheiner and his family moved to Minnesota, where he joined Greene Espel PLLP.

Today, Scheiner has a diverse litigation and investigations practice in health care, consumer technology, education, renewable energy and manufacturing. Recently, he was part of a Greene Espel team that defended 3M in a product liability case involving abuse of a discontinued aerosol dust remover product.

Scheiner also used his investigative skills to help 3M find and facilitate the seizure of hundreds of thousands of counterfeit N95 masks.

Scheiner maintains a diverse pro bono practice. When journalist Linda Tirado was covering a protest following George Floyd’s murder, despite displaying press credentials, she was shot with a projectile and blinded in one eye. Scheiner was on the team that got her a $600,000 settlement with the city of Minneapolis. He also helped an elderly client vacate a fraudulent grant deed and keep her parents’ house, and a California state prisoner who accused prison guards of First Amendment violations.

The variety of cases suits Scheiner. “It keeps things interesting,” he said. “Every time you work with a client in a new industry, the business issues are different, and there are new areas of law to master.”

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