Tom is a lifelong South Dakotan and has been licensed to practice in that state since 1998. He maintains a full-time faculty position with the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law in Vermillion where he teaches courses such as Trusts & Wills and Estate Planning and serves as the faculty advisor to the Saint Thomas More Society. He graduated with honors from the same law school where he now teaches. Tom is licensed to practice in South Dakota and he works for Thompson Law part-time in an ‘of counsel’ capacity.
Prior to his teaching career, Tom practiced estate planning for thirteen years in a Rapid City law firm and clerked for two years for federal district judge Andrew Bogue.
Tom is an academic fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel (ACTC). His published scholarship can be found in places like the Missouri Law Review, the Gonzaga Law Review, the Quinnipiac Probate Law Journal, and the Elder Law Journal. He regularly testifies as an expert on trust and estates matters.
Tom also serves as an Associate Justice of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Supreme Court and as a gubernatorial appointee to the South Dakota Governor’s Trust Task Force on Trust Administration and Reform.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5.
Thomas E. Simmons is a full-time faculty member of the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law and devotes his primary energies and attention to the demands of that job – including teaching, student-support, research, scholarship, faculty governance, and service. He maintains a professional part-time relationship with Thompson Law and its clients as an “of counsel” attorney.
