Richard G. Settgast

In 2013, while still serving as an assistant public defender, he co-founded the Indigent Criminal Justice Trial Clinic which gives Penn State Dickinson Law students in their third-year of study the opportunity to represent actual clients charged with misdemeanor crimes. Students selected for his clinic represent clients through every stage of a criminal case including a potential jury trial. In 2014, he also began work as an adjunct professor, teaching LL.M. students legal writing and advanced legal writing. In 2017, he left the Centre County Public Defender Office to teach as a full-time adjunct professor and to become director of LL.M. Legal Writing, Research, and Analysis at Penn State. In 2020, he became an Assistant Professor of Clinical Law. He also acted as the academic adviser to international students enrolled in the LL.M. Program from 2017 through 2021. Professor Settgast was awarded the inaugural LL.M. Teaching Award by the LL.M. class of 2020. He received this award for a second time in 2023.

Prior to becoming an assistant public defender, he was a law clerk to the Honorable Thomas K. Kistler in the Court of Common Pleas for Centre County.