Horses and Canoes | Heather Shoemaker Wyoming

Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming is a Cheyenne attorney who specializes in civil rights and criminal law. She practices out of an office in the downtown area.

Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming is also a skilled artist. She has had some instruction during her life but for the most part is self-taught. Heather Shoemaker is good enough to have had many of her drawings displayed in a local gallery, including a show that she called “Legal Doodling.”

Heather Shoemaker Wyoming

“It really was just a lot of doodles, but the gallery owner really liked them,” she says. Heather Shoemaker says that she is a compulsive doodler. “When I’m on the phone, when I’m interviewing a client, and especially when I’m in court,” she says with a laugh. And with the help of a curator at the Flat Mountain Gallery on Front Street, she selected fifty sketches for “Legal Doodling.” The framed collection, several of which have already been sold, opened in early 2014.

And sure enough, each of the sketches is on paper from an 8×14 inch yellow legal pad. A few of them were done in black ink, but most of the sketches are in an ordinary #2 pencil. “That’s the same as an HB pencil,” she says, naming a medium hard, common sketch pencil.

The drawings in “Legal Doodling” range from simple sketches to more complex drawings that feature a lot of detail, including extensive shading achieved through a technique called cross-hatching. “Those were slow days in court,” laughs Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming. There are portraits of judges and jurors, opposing counsel, and court officials like bailiffs. There are no sketches of defendants, however. She has sketches numerous defendants – she says she sketches just about everything, and almost always has a pocket sized sketchbook with her – but felt it would be wrong to include them in “Legal Doodling.”

Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming has been practicing law for about ten years now. She attended the University of Wyoming College of Law and received her Juris Doctorate early in 2004. She was admitted to the Wyoming bar that same year, and joined the Law Offices of Vernon Dill as an Associate.

Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming left Vernon Dill at the end of 2006, and after practicing out of her home for about six months opened a small law office in downtown Cheyenne. She specializes in criminal and civil rights law. “I never feel more American than when I have a civil rights case,” she says. “There’s a lot of discrimination in the world – there always has been and I guess there always will be. So when I am able to do something about it, well – it’s a good feeling.”

Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming has most often represented civil rights cases involving race discrimination, sexual harassment, and fair housing, but has also had a few cases of discrimination in employment and false arrest. “There are only certain rights protected under civil rights laws, of course,” she says. “Sometimes what might appear to be a violation of your rights turns out to be perfectly legal. Unethical, perhaps, and immoral. But still legal. So they wouldn’t form the basis for a civil rights case.”

One case that came to her office recently involved a wheelchair-bound man who said he was denied housing in a local apartment building because the landlord didn’t want to have a tenant who was in a wheelchair. “It turned out the landlord was afraid he would have to make all sorts of renovations to the place to accommodate my client, like ramps. He wouldn’t have been required to do any of that, but he was required to rent to my client, who was a qualified applicant.” Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming won the case, and her client was allowed to rent the apartment, although as it turned out he had found another place by the time he case was resolved.