Collin Tierney
Case Committee Co-Chair
Collin Tierney is a criminal defense lawyer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A career public defender, Collin is passionate about issues of poverty, race, and access in the American justice system. He has tried approximately 20 jury trials, from misdemeanors to drug cases, to murder, and has represented clients on more than a thousand cases.
Collin has a long history with mock trial. He competed in high school, college and law school, leading teams to nationals in all three. Since graduating law school, Collin has stayed involved in mock trial through coaching. Throughout his time competing and coaching, Collin's teams have won one national championship, two national runner up awards, and several Top 5 and Top 10 national placements. While in law school, Collin earned the coveted title of Top Gun at Baylor Law School's prestigious, 1-on-1 nationwide mock trial tournament, which invites one law student from each of the best sixteen trial advocacy programs in the country to compete with a fact pattern that is released just 24 hours ahead of the first round. Collin has been an Empire volunteer since 2018, when he retired from coaching Nova Classical Academy's high school mock trial program to the national runner up finish at the 2018 National High School Mock Trial Championships.
As the Case Chair for the 2019 and 2020 seasons of Empire, Collin's number one goal has been to help design cases that are realistic and educational, with an eye towards continuing Empire's tradition of highlighting fairness concerns in the American legal system. Many facets of the cases he has helped develop for Empire rely on experiences he has seen in his practice.