Founder, Associate Director
Dave L. Roll founded the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation in late 2005 and served as its Managing Director from 2006 -2008. Effective January 1, 2009, Chloe Holderness took over as Managing Director and Mr. Roll now provides management oversight and assistance on a more limited basis. Mr. Roll brings more than 35 years experience in law, government, and business to the Foundation. In 2007, Mr. Roll’s contribution to the creation and management of the Foundation was recognized when Civic Ventures made him a Purpose Prize Fellow.
While he spends a portion of his time as Associate Director of the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation, Mr. Roll is also a senior partner in Steptoe & Johnson, Lex Mundi’s member firm for Washington, DC, specializing in antitrust and administrative law and litigation. Mr. Roll served as Chair of Steptoe & Johnson from 1993 through 1998 and has been active in other management positions in the law firm and in private business. Mr. Roll was Steptoe & Johnson’s principal contact person for Lex Mundi, the world’s largest association of independent law firms, and he served on Lex Mundi’s Board of Directors.
Steptoe & Johnson has one of the largest and best known pro bono programs in the world. Mr. Roll has been a regular participant in and a strong advocate of the firm’s public interest activities.
Mr. Roll is a nonfiction author. His most recent book, The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler, was published by Oxford University Press in 2013. Mr. Roll co-authored another political biography entitled Louis Johnson and the Arming of America: The Roosevelt and Truman Years (Indiana University Press) that was published in 2005.
Mr. Roll was educated at Amherst College (B.A., cum laude, economics) and The University of Michigan Law School (J.D.).
