David Richman

A Philadelphia native, DAVID RICHMAN is a graduate of Cheltenham High School, Dickinson College (where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa), and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania. David practiced law in Philadelphia for five eventful years as an assistant district attorney followed by a nearly fifty-year career as a litigator in the corporate law firm formerly known as Pepper Hamilton LLP, now known as Troutman Pepper Locke LLP, where he holds the titles of Retired Partner and Fellow of the firm’s Pepper Center for Public Service. At different times and for different periods of time, David chaired the firm’s litigation department, environmental practice group, and its associates and compensation committees. 

Whatever successes he enjoyed representing corporate clients in a wide variety of civil and criminal matters, David is perhaps most renowned professionally for his representation as court-appointed counsel of the inmates of Philadelphia’s Prison System in an 18-year-long federal class action challenging the inhumane conditions of confinement in the city’s jails, litigation that brought about transformative if transitory improvements in the city’s penal and criminal justice system. (He is also renowned among his loved ones and college peers for having been a member of Dickinson’s G.E. College Bowl team that retired undefeated thanks to some uncommonly knowledge-saturated teammates of David’s.)

Complementing his legal practice, David was an adjunct professor of law for fifteen years at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, and he served as an officer and board member for a number of Philadelphia’s public interest law firms or non-profit agencies. Notably he served on the board of the Defender Association of Philadelphia for 37 years, chaired the board of the Education Law Center-PA for a dozen years, and co-founded the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, which he led as its president for its first nine years. David was also the vice-chair of both the Pennsylvania Prison Society and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia. From 2000 to 2002 he chaired the Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania’s Law Alumni Society. 

For “his significant accomplishments in improving the administration of justice in Pennsylvania,” David was presented with the Philadelphia Bar Association’s 2015 PNC Achievement Award, and the Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section honored him in 2022 with its Justice Thurgood Marshall Award, again for his contributions to the cause of criminal justice. 

An affiliation with Settlement Music School began with David’s appointment to the advisory board of the Mary Louise Curtis Branch where he served from 2000 to 2012. After a hiatus of five years or so, David was invited to join the advisory board of Settlement’s Peter A. Benoliel Germantown Branch on which he continues to serve.

At the end of 2024, David concluded two four-year terms of service as a member of Lower Merion Township’s Environmental Advisory Council where he was instrumental in the township’s formulation of a sustainability plan with target dates for achieving carbon neutrality.