Attorney Profiles

Jory Ruggiero joined the Firm as an associate in 1999 and became a partner in 2005. He is an honors graduate of the University of Montana where he earned his Juris Doctorate and a Masters Degree in Environmental Studies. During law school, Jory served as Editor of the University of Montana Public Land and Resources Law Review and as a member of the law school's competitive negotiation team. He received the Erasmus and Edwin W. Briggs Scholarships for outstanding achievement during his graduate study.

Prior to joining the firm, Jory did legal work for the United Nations Environmental Programme in Nairobi, Kenya; for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in Missoula, Montana; and for a host of non-profit, environmental protection groups throughout the west. Jory's primary practice interests include environmental protection, toxic tort litigation and insurance bad faith cases.

Jory is the Western Montana Representative of the Natural Resources Section of the Montana Bar Association, a member of the Montana Trial Lawyers Association and a member of the American Association for Justice (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America). He is a member of the bars of the State of Montana, the U.S. District Courts in Montana and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Jory is an avid writer publishing natural history writing, ethnographic essays and natural resource law articles. His legal publications include: Toward a Law of the Land: the Clean Water Act as a Federal Mandate for the Implementation of an Ecosystem Approach to Land Management, Jory Ruggiero, Spring 1999 Public Land and Resources Law Review; and Politics and the Columbia Basin Assessment Learning from the Past and Moving to the Future, Jack Ward Thomas and Jory Ruggiero, Fall 1998 Public land and Resources Law Review.

Jory holds a Bachelor of Science Degree Summa Cum Laude in Biology from the University of Wyoming. Prior to practicing law, he worked as a wildlife and fisheries biologist, as a back country ranger for the National Park Service and as an ethnographer in northwest Alaska. Jory chooses to make his home in Bozeman, Montana for the skiing, boating, fly fishing, backpacking and other wilderness recreation opportunities.