Richard J. Dodson

Richard Dodson is a prominent attorney in maritime and admiralty law and co-founder of the Baton Rouge-based Dodson & Hooks Law Firm, one of the world’s leading maritime law firms. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Louisiana State University in 1964 and received his Juris Doctorate from the Louisiana State University Law Center in 1966. As a maritime and admiralty lawyer, he focuses on representing foreign seafarers in claims for violations of their rights, personal injury, death, and wages claims for incidents upon the waterways and vessels of the world, and for repatriation.

Dodson was one of the first international maritime personal injury lawyers in the state and one of the few to focus on collecting unpaid wages for crews on foreign ships. The firm’s clients include individuals, companies, unions, and conglomerates across the world, including those from Russia, China, Japan, the Philippines, Poland, India, Chile, Ukraine, and others. He has been a member of the LSU Law Center’s Board of Trustees for many years and a sustaining member of the Law Center’s Dean’s Council. He is an advisor and frequent presenter at the Center’s annual Rubin Maritime Law Seminar. For over 30 years, he served as an adjunct professor of law at Tulane University and Southern University Schools of Law. In addition, he taught internationally in summer schools in Greece from 1987 until 2016.

Dodson is a devoted collector of maritime art and antiques. Forty years of collecting has resulted in an extraordinary assemblage of maritime artifacts, ships’ passports, sea letters, and documents signed by Presidents of the United States. He has the most complete collection of American ships’ passports and sea letters in the world. The Maritime Art collection is a complement to the LSU Law Center’s Dodson and Hooks Endowed Chair in Maritime Law, a 2017 gift from the Dodson and Hooks Law Firm.