Schnake named Distinguished Attorney by Springfield Bar Association

Mt. Vernon native Richard L. Schnake, a Springfield lawyer, has received the 2025 Distinguished Attorney Award from the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association.
The award is the highest honor the SMBA bestows.  
The award recognizes an SMBA member who has exhibited exemplary standards in the practice of law for 20 or more years, whose practice of law epitomizes the highest legal and ethical standards to which all attorneys should strive, and who has actively served both the legal and non-legal community.
Schnake, a partner in the firm of Neale & Newman, L.L.P., received the award at the SMBA’s annual Law Day luncheon Oct. 28.
Schnake, the son of the late Ivan and Phyllis Schnake of Mt. Vernon, graduated from Mt. Vernon High School in 1975. He received the MVHS Outstanding Alumni award from the MVHS Alumni Association in 2013.
Before attending law school, Schnake was The Lawrence County Record’s sports editor for six years.
He graduated from (Southwest) Missouri State University in 1979 and received his law degree in 1982 from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
Schnake practices in the areas of appeals and intellectual property. He has handled some 300 state and federal appeals in some 60 substantive areas and has argued 16 cases before the Missouri Supreme Court.  
He has also handled more than 400 applications to register trademarks in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He has won cases before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in Washington, D.C., and regularly registers copyrights in the United States Copyright Office.
Schnake has been recognized in Super Lawyers for 18 years and in Best Lawyers in America for 11 years.  He was Best Lawyers’ 2019 Springfield Lawyer of the Year in appellate practice.  He has a perfect 5.0 out of 5 AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell, the nation’s oldest lawyer rating organization, and is the only Southwest Missouri lawyer named to the Missouri Lawyers Weekly’s “POWER List: Appellate Law,” on which he has been recognized since its inception in 2021.
The Missouri Supreme Court has appointed Schnake to serve on three of its committees, including its Appellate Practice Committee, since 1989.
Schnake is the author of Civil Rules Practice: Rules 85 to 88, which is a part of the venerable Missouri Practice series published by Thomson Reuters, a multinational legal publisher.  He annually updates the book, which is now in its second edition.  
He has also written numerous articles on appellate practice and spoken at seminars sponsored by the SMBA and The Missouri Bar.
He joined Neale & Newman in 1983 after serving as the law clerk to Judge Warren D. Welliver of the Missouri Supreme Court.  He has been a partner since 1988.
Schnake is a longtime member of the board of directors of a vital Ozarks nonprofit agency, the Betty and Bobby Allison Ozarks Counseling Center, a United Way agency that provides mental health services on a sliding-scale fee for those least able to afford them.  He has served on that board for 38 years, since 1987, and chaired the fundraising committee for its signature benefit, The Not-So-Newlywed Game, for 15 years.
He is also a former president and a member of the Board of Trustees of The Supreme Court of Missouri Historical Society, which plays a major role in preserving the history of the Supreme Court and of both the Missouri judicial system and legal profession.
He is an active member of the East Sunshine Church of Christ in Springfield.  He lives in Springfield with his wife, Kelly, and their son, Christian.