Paul M. Brown was one of the four original co-founders of Lafayette Preparatory Academy. Paul has served as a member of LPA’s board of directors since the school was incorporated and was LPA’s first treasurer and also chaired the board’s real estate committee. In 2016, Paul received the Missouri Public Charter School Association’s “Charter School Advocate of the Year Award.” Paul is a retired attorney. He spent 40 years at the downtown law firm of Thompson Coburn LLC, where he was a partner in the Litigation Section, and 18 months at the end of his legal career as Chief Counsel – Litigation in the Office of the Missouri Attorney General. Paul was inducted into the American Board of Trial Advocates in 2005 and was recognized as one of the Super Lawyers of Missouri® and Best Lawyers in America®, including “Lawyer of the Year” in 2015 for Class Action and Mass Tort Litigation in St. Louis. In addition to his law practice, Paul served for four years as an adjunct professor of law at St. Louis University School of Law. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, former co-chair of the Downtown Residents Council, and served for more than nine years as Chair of Lawyers for City Neighborhoods, a committee of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis that works on vacant and nuisance property issues. He was the first to propose and was instrumental in the creation of the Neighborhood Advocacy Program at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. He is a past recipient of the “Spirit of Justice Award” from the St. Louis Bar Foundation and the “President’s Award” from the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis. During his work on issues impacting city neighborhoods, Paul was recognized by the St. Louis Small Business Weekly as one of the “100 People in St. Louis You Need to Know.”
