The POWER List: Neal F. Perryman

Lewis Rice, St. Louis

As chair of his firm’s litigation department, Neal Perryman has defended law firms, Saint Louis University and other entities.

Perryman was selected to chair the Lewis Rice department in 2020. He is a longtime member of the firm’s management and recruiting committees and a founding member of its diversity and inclusion committee.

He earned his law degree from Southern Illinois University in 1991. He is a fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America.

In 2008, he won a defense verdict for Saint Louis University against a terminated education specialist in its School of Medicine who had claimed gender discrimination, retaliation and wrongful discharge in her suit.

In 2014, he won for SLU again in the 8^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals against claims that it was deliberately indifferent to a student’s rape. The court confirmed a prior summary judgment for the university.

In 2019, Perryman represented Armstrong Teasdale in a dispute with a former partner who was forced by firm policy to retire at 70. The 8^th Circuit sided with the firm and said the policy does not violate federal age-discrimination laws.