Spero T. Lappas, Esquire is an attorney in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where he practices civil litigation and criminal defense with concentrations in serious property damage and personal injury claims, and major felony defense. He is licensed to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania and all Pennsylvania state courts. He has served as lead counsel in hundreds of major civil, criminal, and civil rights actions, including some of Central Pennsylvania's most important trials. He has handled cases involving wrongful death, automobile accident injuries, insurance bad faith, fire damage and losses, work related personal injuries, and most other kinds of damage claims. In the criminal arena he has defended several death penalty murder cases, federal drug felonies and conspiracies, federal sports bribery, state and federal crimes of violence, major fraud allegations, and most other varieties of cases in which citizens have been charged with serious state and federal crimes. In the civil rights arena he has represented citizens in cases involving police misconduct, excessive force, wrongful arrest and prosecution, sex discrimination, disparate impact, disparate treatment, prisoners rights, students rights, age and race discrimination, wrongful death, freedom of speech and association, search and seizure, and whistleblowers rights.

His career achievements have been recognized in many leading publications about legal professionals. He was among the nation's youngest attorneys to be named in the first edition of The Best Lawyers in America. He has been listed in Who's Who in American Law, Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in Finance and Industry, Who's Who in America, Who's Who Among Emerging Leaders in America, America's Leading Lawyers and The Bar Register of Pre-Eminent Lawyers. He has an AV rating -- the highest possible recognition -- from the Lexis/Nexus Peer Reviewed rating system.

Attorney Lappas graduated with honors from Allegheny College and received the Juris Doctor degree cum laude from the Dickinson School of Law (now, the Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University). While at Allegheny College, he was twice named an Alden Scholar, he received Departmental Honors at graduation, and was awarded the prestigious Muhlfinger Prize for his independent research. At the Dickinson School of Law, he was named to the Editorial Board of the Dickinson Law Review and was a member and faculty adviser of the National Trial Moot Court Team. He won two American Jurisprudence Awards, and published two items in the Dickinson Law Review. He was later named to Dickinson's Woolsack Society.

Attorney Lappas has taught Trial Methods and Pretrial Practice as an Adjunct Professor at the Widener University School of Law and is a contributor to the journal of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, The Champion Magazine. He is the author of "Taxpayer Standing In The Wake of Flast v. Cohen," 81:3 Dickinson Law Review, p. 495, 1977; "Municipal Corporations - A State's Police Power Does Not Allow The Alteration of The Payment Terms of Short Term Municipal Notes. Flushing National Bank v. Municipal Assistance Corp., 40 N.Y.2d 731, 390 N.Y.S.2d 22 (1976)," 81:4 Dickinson Law Review, p. 866, 1977; "Thermal Imaging and the Fourth Amendment," The Champion, June 1994; "This Should have Been a Simple Case: Dretke v. Haley and the Illusion of Actual Innocence", The Champion, January/February 2005; and "The Embarrassment of Innocence," The Champion, August 2006.

He serves as a member of the Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission's Senate Advisory Committee to Study the Causes of Wrongful Convictions pursuant to Pennsylvania Senate Resolution 381 of 2006. On that Committee he is a member of the Legal Representation subcommittee and the Governmental Misconduct working group.

He is a member of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union (which he also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the South-central Pennsylvania Chapter), the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the Dauphin County Bar Association, American Mensa (the national "High IQ" society), the United States Fencing Association, and the National Scrabble Association. He is the past chairman and vice-chairman of the USFA's Harrisburg Division, and a past member of the National Legal Aid and Defenders Association, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association. He is a prize winning photographer who has exhibited photographs at several Central Pennsylvania galleries, as well as at four one man shows. He is a a tournament Scrabble champion, an artist member of the Art Association of Harrisburg, and a competitive three weapon fencer who has fenced in dozens of state and national championship tournaments.