David R. Dow

Counsel
ddow@skv.com
713.221.2318

PROFILE

David R. Dow is the Cullen Professor at the University of Houston Law Center and the Rorschach Visiting Professor of History at Rice. He has been Of Counsel to SKV since the firm began. Dow teaches and publishes in the areas of contracts, federal courts, constitutional law, and death penalty law. He has published six books, including Texas Contract Law, co-authored with Craig Smyser in 2005, and supplemented annually.

Mr. Dow earned his B.A. magna cum laude from Rice University, and his M.A. (in history) and J.D. from Yale University, where he was an editor on the Yale Law Journal. Upon graduation, he clerked for Judge Carolyn Dineen King of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and subsequently practiced law at the firm of Susman Godfrey L.L.P., where he concentrated on commercial litigation.

Mr. Dow now concentrates on appeals and dispositive motions and has handled scores of appeals in numerous state courts of appeals, the Texas Supreme Court, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, as well as the federal courts of appeals, including the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

Rice University
B.A., magna cum laude, 1981

Yale University
M.A., History, 1982

Yale Law School
J.D., 1985
Editor, Yale Law Journal

Law Clerk
to the Hon. Carolyn Dineen King
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

Of Counsel
Smyser Kaplan & Veselka, L.L.P.
1995 - present

Professor
University of Houston, Law Center
1988 - present

Associate
Susman Godfrey L.L.P.
1987-1988

Dow Attorney Badge

PUBLICATIONS AND SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

Texas Contract Law
2005, West Publishing
Craig Smyser (co-authored with Professor David Dow)
PDF of Table of Contents and Chapter on Fraud and Misrepresentation (862KB)

Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row
2005, Beacon Press
David R. Dow

Read the first chapter (108KB)