About David E.
David E. Crawford began his professional life as an engineer. He earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University in 1983 and an M.S. in Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1987. He later shifted to law, taking his J.D. from Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University in 1993. The technical training he received before law school has been a steady current in his career ever since.
His first position out of law school was as an associate at Rogers, Howell & Haferkamp in 1993. That firm later became part of Thompson Coburn. By 1995 he was a partner at Senniger Powers Leavitt & Roedel, and he returned to partnership roles over the next decade, joining Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal in 2002 and Senniger Powers LLP in 2007. In 2017 he founded Crawford IP Law, where he continues to practice.
Before law, Crawford worked as a turbine design engineer for GE Aircraft Engines beginning in 1983. That hands-on engineering experience informed the pivot to intellectual property law. It also explains his admission to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a qualification that allows him to handle patent matters born of technical invention.
Crawford’s credentials bridge engineering and law. He has held Professional Engineer registrations in Ohio and Missouri; the Missouri registration is retired and the Ohio registration is inactive. He maintains bar and professional memberships that reflect both legal and technical interests, and he has taken leadership roles in several organizations.
He has been active in the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis for many years, serving as president in 2008–09 and chairing the association’s Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Section early in his local bar career. He served on the Missouri Lawyer Trust Account Foundation’s board and was its president in 2016 and 2017. Nationally, he served in the American Bar Association House of Delegates in 2016–17 and on the Executive Council of the National Conference of Bar Presidents from 2009 to 2011. He has also been involved with the NKU Chase College of Law Transactional Law Practice Center as a founding board advisor.
The arc of his career is consistent: technical training, legal training, and specialized practice that combines the two. He is licensed in Missouri and is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He now runs Crawford IP Law and concentrates his practice on patent and intellectual property matters arising from engineering and technology.
