David C. Roper

David is an associate in Taft’s litigation practice group. He has deep experience in trial and appellate courts, including:

• Serving as a key team member in a case that culminated in a multimillion-dollar trial judgment.
• Drafting winning briefs filed in multiple intermediate appellate courts and the Supreme Court of Ohio.
• Presenting oral argument in a state intermediate appellate court.
• Advocating for pro bono clients in courts and before federal agencies.

David’s perspective on effective advocacy comes from working for two federal judges. He clerked for the Hon. Raymond A. Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Hon. Rachel S. Bloomekatz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

David earned a J.D. cum laude from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where he also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Ohio State Law Journal. He received a B.A. summa cum laude from Walsh University, where he lettered in baseball.

Lifers After Montgomery: More SCOTUS Guidance is Necessary to Protect the Eighth Amendment Rights of Juveniles, 79 Ohio St. L.J. 991 (2018)

Pandemic Compassionate Release and the Case for Improving Judicial Discretion over Early Release Decisions, 33 Sentencing Rep. 27 (2020)

Co-Teaching, Remote Learning, and the Fiction & Reality of the Fifth Amendment, Legal Writing Institute One-Day Workshop, California Western School of Law (Dec. 9, 2020) co-presented with Katherine Silver Kelly