WICHITA – The Wichita Bar Association honored well-known criminal defense attorney Dan Monnat with its 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. Monnat’s decades-long career includes nearly 50 years practicing law in Kansas and Nebraska.
The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a bar member “whose sustained superior performance and accomplishments have brought credit and recognition to the profession,” the Wichita Bar Association explained.
A news release announcing Monnat’s recognition from the Wichita Bar Association said he’s “earned a national reputation for his staunch defense of high-profile, though sometimes unpopular, people, companies, and causes.”
“The WBA represents more than 1,000 lawyers in the Wichita area, and I am beyond humbled by their selection of me to receive this honor,” Monnat said. “We have an incredibly dedicated field of attorneys in Wichita, and I am always cognizant of the enormous debt I owe to my mentors and allies in the bar. I am grateful for my WBA colleagues and know that we will always stand together, bound by our passion for this profession and our love of the Constitution.”
Monnat, recognized nationally for his work in several cases, includes the successful defense of a man who’d been wrongfully accused of being the BTK serial killer before Dennis Rader’s arrest in 2005.
In 1985, Monnat and legal scholar Stan Spurrier founded the Wichita law firm, Monnat & Spurrier. Through his years in Wichita, accolades for Monnat have included recognition of being named among the Best Lawyers in America for more than 35 years.
“A member of the [Wichita Bar Association] for 49 years, Dan has taught numerous CLE seminars for the organization on such topics as illegal search and seizure, drug detection dogs, trial techniques, and federal sentencing. He has also served on its Criminal Practice Committee,” the news release announcing his Lifetime Achievement Award explained.