Thomas M. Susman became the Director of the Governmental Affairs Office of the American Bar Association in May 2008 and ABA Associate Executive Director, Washington Office, in February 2010. The Governmental Affairs Office serves as the focal point for the Association's advocacy efforts before Congress, the Executive Branch, and other governmental entities on diverse issues of importance to the legal profession.

Prior to joining the ABA in 2008, he was a partner in the Washington Office of Ropes & Gray LLP for over 25 years. There his work included counseling, litigation, and lobbying on a wide range of regulatory, antitrust, lobbying, ethics, and information law issues. He handled legislative matters on behalf of both large and small clients – businesses, trade associations, and nonprofit organizations – in a variety of industries. He was active in seeking enactment of legislation, in obtaining appropriations for specific projects, in blocking or amending legislative proposals, and in counseling targets of congressional investigations. Typical projects involved homeland security, energy, tax code amendments, regulatory reform, intellectual property protection, environmental protection, access to government information, Native American issues, and antitrust law reform.

Before joining Ropes & Gray, he served on Capitol Hill for over 11 years. He was Chief Counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure and General Counsel to the Antitrust Subcommittee and to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

He is a nationally recognized expert on lobbying and freedom of information. He co-edits the American Bar Association’s Lobbying Manual; served as an adjunct professor on lobbying at The American University’s Washington College of Law; and chairs the Ethics Committee of the American League of Lobbyists. His most recent articles on the subject address lobbying reform, reciprocity, contingent fee lobbying, and the proper role of campaign contributions in lobbying. He has also written, taught, and lectured on transparency and access to government information; he received the American Library Association’s “Champion of Public Access” award in 2009 and the Collaboration on Government Secrecy’s “Robert Vaughn FOIA Legend” award in 2008, and is founder and president of the D.C. Open Government Coalition.

Mr. Susman previously served in the ABA’s House of Delegates and on its Board of Governors. He is a member of the American Law Institute, was Chairman of the National Judicial College Board, and was president of the District of Columbia Public Library Foundation. He is a graduate of Yale University and received his J.D. from the University of Texas Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Texas Law Review.