About Howard L.
Howard L. Lotven trained first at Drake University and completed his law degree at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law in 1984. He entered the legal community in the mid-1980s and built a practice centered on municipal and criminal matters. His career runs through a steady involvement in local bar organizations and committees that shape municipal court practice in the Kansas City area.
Early in his career Lotven represented the next generation of lawyers in organized bar work. He served as a Young Lawyers Council representative to the Missouri Bar Association from 1986 to 1988 and held roles in the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association throughout the 1980s, including a term as secretary in 1988 and participation on the Municipal Court Committee in the late 1980s. Those years established his ties to municipal court practitioners and local court administration.
Lotven’s association with the Missouri Bar runs deep. He has been active on the Criminal Law Committee and the General Practice Committee since 1989. He also served as co-chair of the Missouri Public Service Committee from 1991 to 1992. Through those committee appointments, he engaged on policy issues that affect misdemeanor dockets, municipal procedures, and practice standards in Missouri courts.
Municipal court work has remained a constant theme. Lotven has been a member of the Municipal Court Prosecutors Association of Western Missouri since 1992 and served on its board of directors from 2006 through 2018. He also participated on municipal court committees for the Kansas City bar across more than one decade, bringing continuity between bench, bar and prosecutor groups. Those roles overlapped with his candidacy for a judgeship in Kansas City in 2005 and later membership in the Missouri Municipal and Associate Circuit Judges Association from 2007 to 2019.
His bar involvement extends to other local associations and membership groups over the years, including participation in the Association of Women Lawyers between 2010 and 2018. The pattern of service reflects a career spent largely inside the municipal and general practice arenas, rather than in high-profile appellate litigation.
Lotven now maintains a private practice under the name Howard L. Lotven, P.C. He continues to handle matters arising in municipal courts and criminal cases, drawing on decades of experience in local court procedures and bar leadership.
