Christopher Beall

Christopher Beall has taught media law, copyright, and trademark law courses at the law school since 2008 while also working in the private sector as a trial lawyer and then in the public sector as a senior state official. 

Most recently, from 2021 to 2025, Chris served as Colorado’s Deputy Secretary of State, responsible for the operations of Colorado’s elections and the state’s business corporation filings, as well as other operations of the Secretary of State’s Office ranging from regulation of campaign finance, lobbyists, and charities to the supervision of nonprofit gaming (raffles and private lotteries), notaries public, copyright license filings, durable medical equipment leasing, and quarterly economic indicators publications. 

Before his work at the Secretary of State’s Office, Chris served as a Deputy Attorney General in the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. He was responsible for the staff in the Business & Licensing Section, providing counsel and representation to state agencies spanning the administrative spectrum from the Department of Agriculture to the Securities Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, Real Estate Commission, Medical Board,  Veterinary Board, and even the licensing of plumbers and electricians, and also advising and representing the state’s Independent Ethics Commission and its Civil Rights Commission. In this role, Chris also represented the Governor in various emergency matters during the 2020 pandemic on state constitutional questions before the Colorado Supreme Court.

Before his public service, Chris was an IP and First Amendment litigator in New York, first with the former First Amendment boutique firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, and then with the national firm Fox Rothschild.  Chris handled copyright infringement trials in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and he has handled trademark and defamation cases across the country.

Before his career as a lawyer, Chris was a journalist at the Raleigh News & Observer, the San Jose Mercury News, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the Providence Journal-Bulletin.

Chris earned his J.D. summa cum laude and Order of the Coif from Duke Law School in 1997, and his B,A. in English Literature from Yale University in 1985.

Chris clerked for the Hon. David M. Ebel, Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Denver from 1997-1998.

Chris currently practices law at the firm Recht Kornfeld, P.C., in Denver.