David L. Brown, Esquire
2023 American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for the Eighth Circuit
David L. Brown has been selected to receive the prestigious 2023 American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for the Eighth Circuit. Brown has been a partner in the Des Moines, Iowa, law firm Hansen, McClintock & Riley since 1978. He will receive the award during the 2023 Eighth Circuit Judicial Conference.
“David’s character, integrity, and gravitas are evident wherever he is at work, making a positive and meaningful difference,” writes U.S. Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who supported Brown’s nomination by District Judge Robert W. Pratt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. “David Brown is a legal luminary committed to excellence.”
After growing up on the campus of Illinois State University, where his father was a dean, Brown began his career as a teacher in the Bloomington, Illinois, public school system before turning to law. Before joining Hansen, McClintock & Riley, he served as an assistant attorney general for the state of Iowa and as a law clerk for then Chief Justice C. Edwin Moore in the Iowa Supreme Court.
Brown is very active in bar association work and service to the legal community. Currently a bar delegate to the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates since 1997, he has also been a member of its Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary since 2010 and the committee’s vice chair since 2020. (The committee evaluates federal judicial nominees based on their integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament.) Brown was also a member of the American Bar Association’s Board of Governors from 2017 to 2020.
Active in the Iowa State Bar Association, which named him dean of the Iowa Bar in 2007, the association has honored him with its Keeper of the Flame Award in 2014, a President’s Award in 2005, and the Award of Merit in 1999. Brown is the past junior bar president of the Polk County Bar Association, serves as secretary-treasurer of the Iowa Academy of Trial Lawyers, is state chair for the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and a Fellow of the International Society of Barristers, the American College of Trial Lawyers, and ABOTA.
Brown earned an undergraduate degree in history from Lawrence University in 1969 and a master’s degree in history from Michigan State University in 1972. He earned his law degree from Drake University Law School in 1975. He received an honorary doctorate of law from Illinois State University in 2014.