Linda Thomas, Chief Justice of the Fifth District Court of Appeals, received her bachelor of arts degree from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1970 and her Juris Doctor degree from Southern Methodist University in 1973.  Upon graduation from law school, Justice Thomas became the first full-time associate director of the SMU Legal Clinic, a program sponsored by SMU to enable low-income individuals to obtain legal representation.  While at the clinic, Justice Thomas began a lifetime devoted to teaching by taking law students to court and allowing them to participate in the judicial process.  Justice Thomas left SMU to join the general counsel’s office of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in San Francisco, then returned to Dallas and entered private practice.  Justice Thomas’s practice focused on family and juvenile law.

On January 1, 1979, Justice Thomas took office as the Judge of the 256th District Court in Dallas, where she served until December 31, 1986. When she was elected in November 1998, she was the youngest female judge in Dallas County.  The 256th focused on family law cases, and Justice Thomas soon realized that justice could only be served in these cases if the judges and attorneys who served these families were properly educated.  Therefore, Justice Thomas, in addition to her duties as a trial court judge, began teaching substantive law courses for the judiciary and practicing attorneys.  Focusing on family law issues, Justice Thomas challenged judges and court personnel to recognize and address each person’s specific legal issues and needs.  Justice Thomas’s work resulting in her being named a member of the faculty for the Texas College for New Judges from 1981 through 1996 and the National Judicial College from 1992 to the present.  She was a Dean of the Texas Colleges for New Judges from 1988 through 1993 and a Dean of the Texas Regional Judicial Conferences from 1987 through 1990.  Justice Thomas also became certified in family law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.  In 1990, Justice Thomas received the prestigious Sam Emison Memorial Award for meritorious contributions to family law.

After being elected to the Fifth District Court of Appeals, Justice Thomas began her appellate judicial career on January 1, 1987.  She also continued to be involved in judicial education while handling a full docket of appellate cases, traveling extensively throughout the United States teaching substantive legal topics, as well as ethics, gender and racial fairness, and sexual harassment courses to judges and court personnel.  She became a nationally-recognized leader in continuing legal and judicial education.  By the early 1990s, she was also very involved in the statewide Legal Assistants Division of the State Bar of Texas.  While completing both her undergraduate and law degrees, Justice Thomas worked as a legal secretary in a law firm.  Drawing heavily on this experience, Justice Thomas led the statewide effort to develop the first state specific specialization program for legal assistants, creating a career path for legal assistants and providing cost-efficient legal services for the general public.

Justice Thomas served as the Chair of the Texas Board of Legal Specializtion–Legal Assistants Advisory Commission from 1993 through 1995.  She was also the Chair of the State Bar of Texas Committee on Legal Assistants from 1991 through 1995.  She chaired the Board of Directors of the Texas Center for the Judiciary, Inc. and the Judicial Section of the State Bar of Texas from 1991 through 1992.  She received the Distinguished Alumni Award from UTA in 1992 and the Presidential Citation from the State Bar of Texas, recognizing dedicated leadership, in 1993.

In January 1995, Justice Thomas became the Chief Justice of the Fifth Court of Appeals, the court’s first female chief justice.  When Justice Thomas began her tenure as chief justice, the Court’s dockets were backlogged, requiring parties to wait long periods of time for their cases to be decided.  Justice Thomas spearheaded the effort to obtain the necessary funding to provide the justices of the Court with the resources they needed to be able to resolve the backlog.  Justice Thomas also recognized the court’s need to utilize available technology and obtained the necessary financial resources and personnel to establish the first web site for a court of appeals in the State.  The user-friendly, award-winning site allows parties to check the status of their cases at any time.  Now that the state’s largest appellate court is running smoothly, Justice Thomas has again increased the amount of time she spends teaching the judiciary, attorneys, and law students.  She taught as an adjunct professor at Texas Wesleyan School of Law, being named the Outstanding Adjunct Professor of Law in 1996, and from 2003 to the present, has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at SMU’s Dedman School of Law.

From 1995 through 1997, Justice Thomas was a member of the Texas Commission on Judicial Efficiency.  In 1995, she was named a Woman of Distinction by Today’s Dallas Woman.  In 1997, she received the Louise Raggio Award for meritorious contributions to women in the law.  In 1998, she received the ABOTA, Judge-of-the-Year Award for outstanding service and dedication to preserving the right to a jury in a civil trial.  She receive the 2004 SMU Maura Award for significant contributions to improving the lives of women and children and the 2005 Dallas Bar Foundation Fellows Award in honor of her distinguished legal career and civic contributions.  She served as the 2003 Chair of the Texas Council of Chief Justices and, from 2005 through the present, has been a member of the Texas Judicial Council.

Justice Thomas is the longest-serving judge in Dallas County.  She lives in Dallas with her mini-schnauzer, Miss Phoebe.