Willie Dow was born on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941, in New Haven and grew up in Stony Creek. Willie graduated from Yale University with a BA Degree in 1963 and then served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia from 1963 to 1965. He became fluent in Spanish and still retains a working knowledge of that language. After The Peace Corps he attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School, graduating in 1968. He received a Reginald Heber Smith Fellowship and worked for two years with legal services programs in Florida and Washington, D.C. From 1970 to 1974 Willie was an attorney with the Public Defender Service in the District of Columbia. He returned to Connecticut as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut in 1974 and served in that position until August of 1976 when he joined the firm.

Willie maintains a heavy litigation practice. His principal focus has been criminal and white collar defense in both state and federal courts. He has represented clients in cases ranging from homicide and crimes of violence, drug offenses and theft, to sophisticated white collar litigation. He has defended individuals and organizations in the trial courts and has argued appeals in the Connecticut Supreme and Appellate Courts and the Federal Courts of Appeals in the Second, Third and District of Colombia Circuits.

Willie has been a Lecturer in Trial Practice at the Yale Law School for more than 30 years. For the last ten years he has co-taught a course on Forensic Science at the Quinnipiac University Law School with Drs. Henry Lee and Elaine Pagliaro. He is a fellow of the America College of Trial Lawyers. He has previously been appointed by the Governor to the Judicial Selection Committee and serves a member of the Connecticut Judicial Branch Criminal Division Task Force. He been Chair of the Executive Committee of the Section for the Administrative Criminal Justice of the Connecticut Bar Association and served for two terms as President of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. He has also served on the Drafting Committee of the Evidence Code adopted by the Judges of the Superior Court. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Federal Practice Section of the Connecticut Bar Association. He has been appointed by the Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court to the Client Security Fund on which he presently serves. For the past 20 years he has co-chaired the annual Criminal Litigation Seminar sponsored by the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association.

For more than fifteen years Willie has been included in the Best Lawyers in America. Since 2006 he has been recognized by Connecticut Magazine as a "Super Lawyer" and in 2008 was voted by his peers as the top attorney in Connecticut.

Among his clients is the former Governor of the State of Connecticut whom he represented in impeachment proceedings before the Connecticut State Legislature and in a federal criminal prosecution; numerous attorneys, judges and physicians in disciplinary proceedings; and a number of companies and organizations that have been the target of state and federal investigations.

Willie has also represented a number of college students. Most recently he secured an acquittal on a charge of Sexual Assault before a jury in Superior Court in New Haven; prevailed on two additional Sexual Assault claims before an administrative bodies at a local university; and secured a dismissal on a highly-publicized flag burning incident. He obtained a new trial for a teacher accused of Risk of Injury due to computer pop-ups in a case that received national media attention.

In addition to a trial and teaching practice he is the author of a regular column for the New Haven County Bar Association publication, Marble Columns.