Thomas C. Papson

Thomas C. Papson is a Volunteer Staff Attorney supporting Legal Aid DC’s provision of direct client services. He represents clients in a wide variety of consumer cases, including cases involving abusive debt collection practices. He is active in Legal Aid legislative and court reform efforts relating to consumer protection and efforts to enhance access to justice for Legal Aid’s client community. He was a leader in Legal Aid’s successful efforts to enact new D.C. debt collection and structured settlement protection laws. He also supported Legal Aid efforts to enact important enhancements to D.C.’s core consumer protection law.

Tom joined Legal Aid as a Volunteer Staff Attorney in September 2013, following his retirement from McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. At McKenna, he maintained a commercial and government contracts litigation and compliance practice for more than 30 years and served as Managing Partner of the firm’s Washington office.
He was a member of the Legal Aid Board of Trustees from 1992 to 2005 and was Board President from 2000 to 2002. In 2018, Tom received Legal Aid’s Servant of Justice Award.

While in private practice, Tom was active in pro bono and other public service work. He served as court-appointed amicus in litigation concerning conditions in the D.C. public schools and as litigation counsel for two historic preservation groups in the District. Tom also held various leadership positions in the D.C. Bar, including Chair of the Judicial Evaluation Committee. He was the organizer and managing editor of the first D.C. Bar Practice Manual, for which he was recognized with the Bar’s President’s Award. He serves as a mediator in the D.C. Circuit’s Mediation Program and received the program’s Mediator Excellence Award in 2026.

Tom is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Georgetown University Law Center. He began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge John J. Sirica of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.