Attorney Profiles

Richard Dvorak graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and history. In 1996, after a brief career in journalism, Mr. Dvorak began attending De Paul University College of Law. During law school, he took a year off to teach English in South Korea and Spain. After returning to De Paul in 1998, Mr. Dvorak was chosen to be a summer intern in Mexico City with an independent Mexican human rights organization. Having lived and worked in Spain and Mexico, Mr. Dvorak is fluent in Spanish.

After graduating from De Paul law school in 1999, Mr. Dvorak worked as an attorney with the Cook County Public Defender's Office in Chicago. While working for the Public Defender's Office, Mr. Dvorak successfully tried numerous bench and jury trials.  Mr. Dvorak then went into private practice, concentrating his work in criminal defense, civil rights and personal-injury litigation. In the Fall of 2004, Mr. Dvorak and Neil Toppel formed the partnership of Dvorak & Toppel.

Mr. Dvorak is the author of the "Confessions" and "Representing Clients in the Early Stages of a Criminal Action" Chapters of Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education's authoritative practitioner's guide, "Defending Illinois Criminal Cases." Mr. Dvorak is also the author of a law review article published in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, 5 Mich. J. Race & L. 611 (2000), titled, Cracking the Code: "'De-Coding' Colorblind Slurs During the Congressional Crack Cocaine Debates." This article, which traces the racist history behind the passage of every major federal drug law, argues why the federal crack cocaine sentencing scheme violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. This article has been cited in dozens of published law review articles; by the American Civil Liberties Union in a March 19, 2002 speech before the United States Sentencing Commission; and was cited by a federal judge in New York in support of his published decision that reduced the sentence for an African-American man convicted of possessing crack cocaine. See Simon v. United States, 361 F.Supp.2d 35, 43, n.9 (E.D. N.Y. 2005).

Mr. Dvorak is a member of the Legal Advisory Board of First Defense Legal Aid (FDLA), a Chicago-based, non-profit legal organization dedicated to protecting the civil rights of individuals in Chicago Police Department police custody. Mr. Dvorak is a member of the Illinois Bar, the general and trial bars for the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, as well as a member of the bar for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court.