Dan attended Georgetown University Law Center, earning his J.D. degree in 1986 and serving as an editor of the American Criminal Law Review.  Afterward, Dan served for one year as a law clerk to the late Ninth Circuit Judge Thomas Tang in Phoenix, Arizona.  Dan practiced law with the San Diego office of Luce Forward Hamilton & Scripps LLP for several years before launching his own law practice in downtown San Diego.  Dan operated Lawton Law Firm for twenty-four years after that, training several young lawyers, all of whom were his former law students.  In 2018, Dan put his full-time law practice on hold in order to take a sixteen-month sabbatical, which he devoted to researching and writing a non-fiction book.  In late 2019, Dan joined the San Diego office of Klinedinst PC, where he is a shareholder and practices in the firm’s appellate and professional liability practice groups.

Throughout his career, Dan has specialized in civil appeals and civil trial work.  He is certified as a legal specialist in Appellate Law by the State Bar’s California Board of Legal Specialization.  He has handled intellectual property litigation on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants.  Dan is also a counselor.  He counsels both corporate and individual clients in a variety of settings, often in negotiations.  His corporate clients have included companies whose stock is publicly-traded and companies whose stock is closely-held.  They have included life sciences companies, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers and distributors of various products, landowners and property developers, large corporations, a local major league baseball franchise, automobile dealerships, and “mom-and-pop” businesses.  His individual clients have included victims of civil rights violations by police departments, officers, directors, and shareholders (both majority and minority) of corporations, bankers, elected officials, politicians, professional athletes and coaches, attorneys, accountants, land owners, entrepreneurs, entertainers, and other individuals.

Dan has handled civil appeals and writs in both the California and federal courts.  Dan has tried multiple jury trials, bench trials, and arbitrations.  He has litigated many cases to disposition short of trial (by way of motions to dismiss and for summary judgment).  Dan obtained the third-largest jury verdict in Imperial County (for $14,286,461, after a nine-week jury trial).  His caseload has included cases involving civil rights violations by police departments, patent infringement, copyright infringement, trade secret theft, unfair competition, defamation, and business torts. 

Dan has helped present CLE courses to audiences of lawyers and judges for over twenty years.  In 2025 and 2024 he lectured at the Pincus Professional Education Ninth and Tenth Annual  Advanced Appellate Conferences on statements of decision and post-trial motions, on panels which included Court of Appeal Justices John Segal and Elizabeth Grimes and distinguished appellate practitioner Gerald Serlin, in Los Angeles.  In February 2025, he presented a program, “Your Jury,” on jury trial practice to a national audience.  Dan has also presented trial skills programs to audiences of lawyers and judges at Association of Business Trial Lawyers programs in San Diego.

Dan is an adjunct professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where he teaches an appellate advocacy course.  Dan also taught a Directed Study course at the law school in 2013.  In it, students collected and organized data concerning demurrer practice in the California courts. 

In 2015 and 2016, Dan was the author of “On Law,” a twice-monthly column which appeared in a local daily newspaper, The Daily Transcript, in 2015 and 2016.  He has been a frequent contributor of legal-related columns to the Los Angeles Daily Journal.  His published written work includes short fiction published in the Sheepshead Review and The Pensive Quill.

In January 2020, Dan and his colleague Dave Majchrzak created Klinedinst PC’s Attorney Training College, which offers bimonthly courses on litigation skills, professionalism, and civility, to the firm’s lawyers for MCLE credit.  Dan also serves on the law firm’s Writing Committee, which offers guidance and feedback on written work prepared by attorneys before its filing, delivery to a client, or publication at no cost to the law firm’s clients.

In his spare time, Dan worked for several years as a volunteer in the Family Literacy Program at St. Vincent De Paul Village in San Diego and at Mama’s Kitchen (a non-profit agency which delivers meals to men, women and children affected by AIDS and other critical illnesses).  He has also served as a mentor at Nativity Prep Academy (a tuition-free, inner-city Catholic middle school for at-risk children in Logan Heights)

Education

• University of Notre Dame (B.A.)
• Georgetown University Law School (J.D.)