Dragan Ivetic

Personal Introduction

DRAGAN DAN IVETIĆ was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, and wanted to become an attorney to help people from a young age. He received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Northwestern University in 1996 and went on to the University of Illinois College of Law where he received a J.D. degree in 1999, and has been practicing law ever since then. Dragan is the owner and managing attorney of our law firm, and goes by either Dragan or Dan, as both are his names. Dragan is currently licensed and authorized to practice before the Illinois courts all the way up to the Illinois Supreme Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Dragan is also authorized to represent clients before the USPTO Trademark Office and the TTAB (Trademark Trial and Appeal Board). Internationally he is one of a select few American attorneys licensed and authorized to practice before the United Nations ICTY/IRMCT, the International Criminal Court, and the State Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina. His practice has led him across the United States, Europe, and Africa. Dragan has been sought and/or retained for international work alongside local counsel in several European countries, as well as Australia and Africa in private legal matters. He has handled civil and criminal litigation matters all over the world, including acting as defense counsel in some of the most high-profile international war crimes cases since World War 2. His most recent such representation, for General Ratko Mladić, was chronicled in the BBC/VPRO/PBS Documentary "The Trial of Ratko Mladić," and is the subject of another pending documentary and countless media articles, interviews and appearances. An in-depth article was written about him and his work in the largest news magazine in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, "De Groene Amsterdamner." In his most recent case before the United Nations, Dragan and the team obtained an acquittal at trial of an African legal investigator accused, charged, and imprisoned for over a year on allegations of contempt and witness tampering. Dragan's practice at this law firm continues with the same diligence and zeal in domestic cases as shown for international cases, with a focus on Trial and Appellate litigation, as well as Transactional work. In 2019, and again in 2023, in recognition of his superb reputation and standing, Dragan's peers elected him President of the Association of Defence Counsel Practicing before International Courts and Tribunals (ADC-ICT) which is the officially recognized bar of all attorneys practicing before the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (the successor to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, respectively). At present, Dragan serves on the executive council and is in the midst of his second tenure as the elected president of the organization. Dragan is also a past Vice-President of the ADC-ICT (simultaneously sitting as a member of the Executive Committee, an elected office he has held on numerous occasions over the past two decades), and he has served previously on the ADC-ICT Membership Committee and the Disciplinary Council as well. ​Achievements at the ADC-ICT include being granted NGO Observer Status at the Military Commissions by the Pentagon's Guantànamo Bay Convening Authority for members to perform the function of an observer at the Military Commission proceedings. Dragan himself received clearance and was the second such observer for the ADC-ICT, traveling in November 2019 to the Military Commission at Guantànamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba to observe proceedings against the alleged masterminds of the 9/11 attacks against America.