Biography
Tom Leatherbury is a Clinical Professor of Law and the inaugural Director of the First Amendment Clinic at the SMU Dedman School of Law. He maintains an appellate practice at Thomas S. Leatherbury Law, PLLC. He is a Commissioner on the Texas Access to Justice Commission and is a member of the American Law Institute (and an Advisor on the current project concerning the defamation provisions of the Restatement of Torts). He has served as a member of the Council of the State Bar of Texas Appellate Section and the ABA Forum Committee on Communications Law Governing Committee and as President of the Defense Counsel Section of the Media Law Resource Center, the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, and the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society. He has also served as Chair of the Dallas Bar Association’s Media Relations Committee and is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the Texas Bar Foundation, and the Dallas Bar Foundation (which honored him with its Justinian Fellows Award in 2018). Tom has been ranked in First Amendment Litigation and Appellate Litigation by Chambers USA and has been named in Best Lawyers in America in First Amendment Law, Commercial Litigation, Appellate Law, and Bet-the-Company Litigation. He is a past recipient of the Patrick Wiseman Award from the State Bar’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Section and the Harry M. Reasoner Justice for All Award from the Texas Access to Justice Commission.
Tom is licensed to practice in Texas and is admitted to practice before all federal courts in Texas, a number of United States Courts of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale College, with a B.A. in history, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he worked in the Mental Hospital Legal Services Clinic and served as student chair of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization. Immediately after law school, Tom clerked for the Hon. Robert M. Hill, a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas.