Sheila Corbine is a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and a 1993 graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Law and now has over 30 years of law practice under her belt. After law school Ms. Corbine worked for nearly 2 years at Wisconsin Judicare’s Indian Law Office where she provided services for all eleven federally recognized tribes in Wisconsin through various grants. At the end of 1994 Sheila started work as an in-house counsel for the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, where initially she worked with the newly established tribal court to get all of the outsourced ICWA and child protection cases transferred from their “leased” tribal court and then proceeded to work extensively on ICWA and transferring cases from other courts across the country.  Eventually, Sheila was appointed as the Attorney General for the Ho-Chunk Nation where she was in charge of providing advice to the Executive Branch Departments, supervising the Department of Justice which consisted of the in-house attorneys, Casino Surveillance, the Nation’s Compliance and Drug Testing Departments as well as Child Support and the Police Department.  In addition, she also worked with the Tribal government to renegotiate a tribal gaming compact. While serving in her capacity as Attorney General for the Nation, she also was a Tribal Court judge for her own Tribe.

For a brief period, Sheila worked with the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut in-house legal department where she worked on code development, election issues, housing issues and served as a temporary gaming commission hearing officer. Eventually, Sheila went back to Wisconsin to continue to serve as the Attorney General at Ho-Chunk and served in that capacity for ten years.

To expand her horizons, Sheila eventually accepted an offer to work in private practice for the law firm of Fredericks Peebles & Morgan. At the beginning of 1999 Ms. Corbine became one of the Founding Partners of Big Fire Law & Policy Group. Big Fire is a 100% Native Owned and majority woman owned law firm. While in private practice Sheila worked as general counsel for the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.

In her lengthy career as both in- house counsel and private practice counsel, Ms. Corbine has practiced in nearly every area of tribal law. Her tribal governance practice includes legal services in the various tribal departments of her clients, including without limitation elections, enrollment, education, social services, law enforcement, natural resources, personnel, housing, both Tribal and HUD programs and finance. She has developed tribal courts from the ground up and assisted tribes with creating tribal government structures. Ms. Corbine has drafted and finalized tribal codes in the substantive areas listed above. She has also represented tribes in code enforcement. Ms. Corbine also has represented tribes in government-to-government consultation in a broad range of substantive areas.

In private practice Ms. Corbine has increased her experience working with tribal economic development entities. She has represented tribes in corporate and regulatory code drafting, entity creation, financing, new markets tax credits, low-income housing tax credits and Section 8(a) government contracting.