Attorney Rabe to seek Madison County judgeship

Edwardsville attorney Mark Rabe has announced his candidacy to succeed Barbara Crowder, who is retiring as circuit judge in the 3rd Judicial Circuit.

Rabe, a 1986 graduate of Harvard Law School, began his legal career at Bryan Cave in St. Louis. While there, he participated in several significant commercial transactions, including two initial public offerings, and later participated in numerous litigation matters, including the defense of a two major white collar criminal investigations.

In 1991, Rabe moved to Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal (now Dentons), also in St. Louis. At Sonnenschein, he focused on litigation matters, including serving as discovery officer on the largest case in the history of the U.S. Federal Court of Claims.

In 1995, Rabe took a position in house with McDonnell Douglas Corp., one of the clients he had represented at both Bryan Cave and Sonnenschein. In his twenty-one years at McDonnell Douglas and Boeing, which purchased McDonnell Douglas in 1997, Rabe managed litigation matters for six years, advised the military procurement division on regulatory and business issues for nine years, and served for six years as the lead counsel for one of the military division’s subdivisions. His litigation responsibilities included cases in federal and state courts in California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Missouri, Michigan, Oklahoma and Washington state, as well as matters in Australia, Canada and Great Britain. His business law responsibilities included negotiating contracts with the U.S. and foreign governments and with numerous suppliers, as well as providing his clients with regulatory and general legal advice, especially with respect to federal procurement law and contracts law. He left Boeing as senior counsel in August 2017, and has been semi-retired since then.

Prior to attending Harvard Law School, Rabe spent five years working full time as a UMWA-represented coal miner while, for the last three of those years, also attending and graduating, in 1983, from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He was born and raised in Steeleville, Ill., in Randolph County.

Rabe will announce his campaign committee and file his contributions reports when required by law.

Rabe has been married to his wife, Cindy Rabe, for 37 years. They have lived in Madison County for all but three of the last 31 years. Those three years were spent on a Boeing assignment in the Seattle area, where the couple’s two children and two grandchildren now live.