Stephanie A. Montaño is a litigation associate with Dongell Lawrence Finney LLP.  She engages in a general civil litigation practice, in State and Federal Courts, with a focus on business, environmental, labor and employment, and regulatory advocacy matters.

Ms. Montaño received her Juris Doctorate Degree from UCLA School of Law in 2010.  She received her Bachelor of Arts Degrees in International Relations and Sociology with an emphasis in Law and Society from the University of California, Davis in 2007.

At UCLA School of Law, Ms. Montaño gained a great deal of experience in issues of international law, including public international law, international criminal law, and international business transactions. She served as the Chief Articles Editor for the UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs.  She was also selected to join the highly competitive International Justice Clinic, where she drafted legal narratives of Cambodian survivors of the Khmer Rouge to submit to the Extraordinary Chambers of the Cambodian Court (ECCC) as part of the Court’s Victim Participation program. As part of the International Justice Clinic, Ms Montaño co-authored a report entitled, The Road to Kampala: U.S. Participation in the Review Conference of the International Criminal Court.  This report was submitted to Congress in April 2010 in preparation for the U.S.’s historic re-engagement with the International Criminal Court at the first Review Conference of its implementing treaty in Kampala, Uganda.  Ms. Montaño participated as an Academic Delegate at the 8^th Session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute in The Hague. 

In 2008 Ms. Montaño received a Fellowship to work for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland assisting in the implementation of the Tobacco Control Treaty as well as a project on environmental and health law tort recovery in China.  In 2009 Ms. Montaño joined Dongell Lawrence Finney as a summer associate and was invited to return as an Associate Attorney upon her graduation from law school.

Ms. Montaño’s expertise with international legal issues extends beyond her experiences in law school.  She spent her final term of college in Washington, D.C. working with the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe where she assisted in organizing the Commission hearings on human rights abuses in Chechnya and Energy Security and Democracy.  During her time in D.C. Ms. Montaño wrote and presented a research thesis on Energy Security and Natural Gas at the University of California Research Conference, for which she and received high honors.