Doug Rawald has been selected to serve as a Judicial Tradecraft Advisor for the U.S. State Department’s Rule of Law/Justice Reform project in Iraq. In that capacity, he will be part of a team or lawyers tasked with creating and implementing the Iraqi government’s new criminal justice system. He is currently living in Iraq and will return to the United States in the summer of 2009. Mr. Rawald is currently unavailable to represent individual clients while he completes this project.

Mr. Rawald has spent his entire legal career as a military trial attorney. He has represented several hundred military clients facing various forms of disciplinary actions ranging from felony level court martial trials to nonjudicial punishment and administrative actions. His court marital trial experience covers a wide variety of offenses, including possession of child pornography, sexual assault, drug use, and murder. Mr. Rawald was the lead military defense counsel for the first Air Force death penalty trial in a decade. He has an outstanding record of success defending members of all the US military branches at court martial, gaining numerous acquittals and ensuring fair treatment for members who the government sought to punish too severely. Mr. Rawald has extensive experience fighting court martial trials across the US and overseas, including installations in Germany, Japan, and South Korea.

Mr. Rawald is a former member of the United States Air Force JAG Corps. During his years as a military defense attorney in the JAG Corps, Mr. Rawald’s superiors regarded him as a “master advocate and first-line criminal defense litigator,” as well as a “stellar” and “shrewd negotiator.” His record is “replete with countless successes” based upon his “unsurpassed work ethic.” While on active duty, Mr. Rawald developed a reputation of success before military juries that won the respect of his supervisors.

During his years in the JAG Corps, Mr. Rawald was hand-picked to become a Circuit Defense Counsel in Washington, DC, where he served as one of the top felony level defense attorneys on the east coast of the United States. Before that, Mr. Rawald served as the Area Defense Counsel at Kunsan Air Base in the Republic of Korea for one year and spent 18 months as the chief of military justice at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany. His successes include the full acquittal of a senior NCO accused of child sexual assault, the full acquittal of an airman facing rape charges, acquittals of multiple clients facing charges of drug use, and numerous light sentences for clients facing severe punishment.

Education
J.D., Cornell Law School, 2001
B.A., Cornell University, School of Arts and Sciences, 1998

Bar Admissions
Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces
Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals
Massachusetts State Courts

Awards and Decorations
Meritorious Service Medal, 2006
Air Force Commendation Medal, 2003, 2004
Air Force Achievement Medal, 2006