Who We Are

  • Attorney/founding member/IT specialist/printer technician

    Dan has practiced as a licensed attorney since 2019. Prior to obtaining his JD from the University of Colorado Law School, he graduated from Colorado College in 2013 with a BA in sociology, along with a Spanish language minor. He competed as a member of CC’s diving team and considers himself a proud Tiger and Coloradan for life.

    Dan’s enthrallment with the universe of Western water resource law—and Colorado’s unique system in particular—took root early and he had fully committed himself to that area of practice even before his formal studies began in 2016. Throughout law school he gained a broad array of firsthand experience, and went on to spend four years at the Colorado office of preeminent western water & natural resources firm. There he gained extensive experience counseling and representing a diverse array of clients in and out of court. These clients included individual landowners, ranchers, HOAs, developers, mutual ditch companies, municipalities, regional water & sanitation districts, and he also provided support on several ongoing Native American water right settlement mediations. Finally, throughout those years Dan was directly and extensively involved in the State of Texas’s U.S. Supreme Court original action (No. 141) against New Mexico over the Rio Grande Compact. He handled numerous high-level responsibilities spanning several critical phases of the litigation, from discovery, to expert witness reports & depositions, all the way through to conclusion of the massively complex pre-trial motion and summary judgment phase.

    After a short detour outside of private practice—where he worked for two years as an on-site contract attorney at Denver Health Hospital and ran what amounted to his own solo practice (successfully adjudicating twenty complex guardianship proceedings in probate court from petition through final hearing, among other roles), thereby solidifying the skill and confidence to lead teams and resolve matters/court proceedings completely independently as a lawyer—Dan decided the right time had come to set out on his own and build this new enterprise in the world where he truly belongs.

  • Firm administrator/paralegal/jane-of-all-trades

    Angela graduated from the College of William & Mary in 2015, where she earned her bachelor’s in science degree (psychology and public health). She has excelled in STEM type coursework throughout her life, and her experience in an environmental science lab focused on the Chesapeake Bay ignited a passionate interest in ecological studies.

    Angela's professional endeavors have focused largely on community mental health care and education. After W&M she went on to attain her Master’s and Education Specialist degrees at James Madison University, and has completed all but the dissertation for her PhD in Human Development. Angela came to Colorado to work at the Jefferson Center for Mental Health as a child and family trauma therapist, consisting of traveling house calls for court-ordered counseling to client families throughout Jefferson County and Clear Creek Counties, along with routine firsthand exposure to the inner workings of the county court systems by extension.

    Angela is collaborating with Dan on the CWC endeavor while she completes her doctoral dissertation. She is the oldest of five, including three brothers, and runs a tight ship.

Story

The summer before entering law school—eager but also very attuned to the reality of what I was signing myself up for—I decided I needed a game plan. I set out in search of some specialized practice area or brand of expertise interesting, meaningful & practical enough to just throw all my chips on from day one, get a three-year head start and take the rest on faith that come whatever may, I’d be able to securely provide for myself over the long haul and have a durable place to consider home in this difficult profession.

I’d lived in Colorado since 2010 and knew I was here for good, so I took a hard look at the topic of western water law and that was pretty much that. In May 2015 ProPublica had launched its epic series Killing the Colorado, and poring over the stories told by those pieces was my experience of first crossing the portal through to this whole other realm. Hooked, I proceeded to learn as much as I could that summer, and Patty Limerick’s incredible book A Ditch in Time sealed the deal—a water lawyer is the only kind I’ve wanted to be ever since.

I’d always envisioned CWC in its ideal form as a two-person operation, and figured even some limited collaboration at the beginning would help accelerate arrival of the point at which hiring a professional sidekick would become feasible. I knew my good friend Angela had useful skills/experience and figured she might respect the cause enough to donate some short-term assistance to the initial branding & organizational build-out. So I ran the idea and she agreed. Through that she ended up with a detailed grasp of the operation I was envisioning, precisely how everything would work, and the strategies I had in mind for growing it. The idea took root Angela could easily do the whole job I’d envisioned for that second person (who’d have to be taught from scratch anyway), and had a great deal of professional competence and aptitude to put to good use beyond just the core day-to-day roles. She arrived to that view as well, and agreed to stick around on retainer.