J. Thomas Bowen

J. Thomas Bowen - known to friends and colleagues as Tom - built a career devoted to representing working people and their unions. He earned his A.B. from Stanford University in 1968 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1971, where he also served as a teaching fellow in poverty law. He was admitted to the State Bar of Nevada on October 6, 1986.

As an associate and later a partner at the Bay Area firm Davis, Cowell and Bowe, Bowen spent three decades representing union members and their legal needs across a wide swath of the West, from Sacramento to south of Fresno. Many of his clients were unionized firefighters, and his union clients also included the culinary workers of Las Vegas, Nevada. His work reflected a lifelong commitment to using the legal system on behalf of society's less powerful.

Beyond his practice, Bowen shared his knowledge of the law with a new generation of students. For many years he taught as an adjunct professor at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California. He died on February 10, 2022, at the age of 75, following a brief illness brought on by a stroke.