Robert R. Hopper & Associates, LLC, is pleased to announce that Finance & Commerce and Minnesota Lawyer recognized Managing Partner Robert R. Hopper with a 2019 Minnesota ICON Award on December 11, 2019 at a celebration and networking event at the Hyatt in downtown Minneapolis.
The ICON Awards honor senior leaders in Minnesota law and business for their years of service, inspiring leadership and the mark they make on the Minnesota business community.
2019 marks Randy Hopper’s 37th year of professional practice and 29th year of private practice as a lawyer. As an attorney, Mr. Hopper has been involved in several high-profile cases such as National Tobacco Litigation, which led to a $247 billion settlement; In re Vitamins Antitrust Litigation; Minot Train Derailment (an environmental case); defective medical device cases against Baycol, Guidant, and Stryker Hip Replacements; and, Metro Gang Strike Force, one of Minnesota’s largest civil rights cases. Mr. Hopper was also Lead Counsel in the high profile false-abduction case representing University of Wisconsin student, Audrey Seiler.
Mr. Hopper began his career as a Program Director for Communities in Schools in 1976. From there he went on to hold dual roles as a Director in corporate public affairs and government relations at the Cummins Engine Company and as a Senior Program Officer in corporate philanthropy at the Cummins Engine Foundation, the company’s charitable giving foundation. Mr. Hopper also worked in economic development at the State of Minnesota, serving as a Special Advisor under Governor Al Quie on a statewide economic development program for entrepreneurship. Mr. Hopper went on to serve as a Policy Advisor at the Minnesota Business Partnership where he worked on a range of public policy issues relevant to business and all Minnesotans. In 1985, Mr. Hopper attended law school at William Mitchell College Law, where upon graduation, he was honored with the Excellence in Trial Advocacy Award. After graduating from law school in 1987, Mr. Hopper became a Founding Partner at Zimmerman Reed in 1990 and enjoyed a 20-year career there until he founded his own law firm in 2011, as Founder and Managing Partner of Robert R. Hopper & Associates, LLC. Prior to joining Zimmerman Reed, Mr. Hopper practiced with Larkin, Hoffman, Daly & Lindgren in that firm’s governmental relations and litigation departments.
Mr. Hopper had been fascinated in the brain and neuroscience and has studied it since childhood. After years of research, he is now on the cutting edge of the law & neuroscience, a new and emerging area of law. He is interested in the many implications these advances in neuroscience are having on business ethics, the civil & criminal justice system, litigation strategy, and predictions and explanations of behavior, which were not previously available until the recent emergence of a greater understanding of the way the brain functions and dysfunctions. Mr. Hopper is working to implement knowledge of these new discoveries into his own law practice, as well as into the substance and curriculum of his lectures and classes at various institutions of higher education. For example, Mr. Hopper represented a defendant in a civil lawsuit who was unknowingly suffering from a brain tumor when he accidentally and tragically hit a pedestrian while driving. Immediately after the incident, the defendant learned that he had five glioblastomas (brain tumors), which cut his peripheral vision – preventing him from seeing the pedestrian. With Mr. Hopper’s extensive knowledge of the brain and the effects of the tumors, he successfully prevented his client from being criminally prosecuted and from having to testify in the civil lawsuit filed against him for wrongful death.
Over his career, Mr. Hopper has served as a leader in the community and has been especially focused on education, with longtime service to Communities in School, both locally and nationally. Mr. Hopper has also served as a member of the adjunct faculty at William Mitchell College of Law. In 2013, he introduced a new course focused on the “State Attorneys General Practice” at his alma mater, the University of Tennessee, in its College of Law. Currently, Mr. Hopper co-teaches Law and Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota Law School with Professor Francis Shen.
Mr. Hopper is a member of the advisory board of Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Brain, Law and Behavior at Harvard University and the Neuroscience Advisory Committee at the Minnesota Medical Foundation at the University of Minnesota. He is also a long-time member of the of the Minneapolis Club, the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association and the Thoroughbred Club of America. He his spare time he enjoys fly fishing, golfing, swimming, bird hunting and sailing.