Education
Mr. Smythe is an honors graduate of the Texas Tech School of Law where he served as an Associate Editor of the Texas Tech Law Review. He received a B.A. with honors in Communication from Oral Roberts University. He served a clerkship at The Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia and is AV-rated by Martindale-Hubble.
Personal Career Summary
I started my career with a solo practitioner in Dallas, Texas, where I represented individuals in catastrophic injury, bad faith insurance, and other civil litigation matters. Unlike associates who head to large law firms, I was immediately thrust into a courtroom practice.
After a few years, I opened my own practice where I continued to concentrate on civil litigation. At or around 1998, I began to represent persons accused of crimes in federal court. Since then I've devoted a larger portion of my practice to federal criminal matters and litigation.
Recently, I have positioned my practice to concentrate on civil and criminal appeals, writs, post-trial practice and related litigation matters. As Greg May writes on his California Blog of Appeal, every lawyer is better at some things than others and a practice that focuses on the law and established facts is a better fit for me than the trial arena. Also, after hundreds, or even thousands, of depositions, hearings, and mediations, it's been time to move on.
In addition to an appellate practice, I maintain a civil litigation practices that concentrates on intellectual property and copyright disputes.