1. Title IX & Thompson Esquire PLLC:
After an extensive and diverse career as an attorney, journalist and higher education professional, Ryan Thompson established THOMPSON ESQUIRE PLLC in 2020, as the new Title IX Regulations caused sweeping changes across the educational landscape.
With few attorneys and law firms able to focus solely on this niche area of practice, Thompson was immediately recognized as one of the top legal scholars in this concentration. (See profile in Buffalo Business First and the Buffalo Law Journal)
THOMPSON ESQUIRE PLLC currently engages with schools and businesses in New York State and throughout the country, conducting investigations, providing counsel and consulting services, and serving as the hearing chair for Title IX and other adjudications.
As a former University Title IX Coordinator and Civil Rights Officer, Ryan Thompson draws on his past experiences to now work with institutions and other Title IX Coordinators, offering the custom services that he knows to be necessary in these high stakes matters. Thompson has handled hundreds of cases, investigating or supervising dozens of sexual assault, misconduct and discrimination/harassment investigations into student and employee allegations. He has overseen investigations at the highest level, working with investigators and attorneys from firms across the United States.
Thompson has worked directly with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), constantly ensuring that a school’s Title IX matters were handled in compliance with one of the federal government’s strictest regulators. But Thompson also knows the value that informal resolutions and prevention training can play in addressing these conflicts and curbing misconduct.
Prior to becoming Title IX Coordinator and Civil Rights Officer, Ryan Thompson worked as a University Assistant General Counsel and Writing Professor, while teaching law at several colleges.
2. Objectivity, Neutrality & Fact-Finding:
Ryan Thompson’s career path and extensive experience in conducting fact-finding investigations into crimes and misconduct allegations has conditioned Thompson to constantly remain a neutral evaluator and objective fact-gatherer in these types of cases. Thompson spent much of his career as an investigative journalist, crime reporter and newspaper editor, publishing stories designed to uncover the truth, irrespective and without consideration of which party was to benefit.
In law school, Thompson worked as a student prosecutor for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, being the only intern to first-chair a criminal trial and win a conviction. In that same year, however, Thompson worked for Brooklyn Law School’s innocence project, examining homicide, rape and robbery cases for prosecutorial error and claims of actual innocence. He spent nearly a year investigating an infamous Long Island teen’s rape and murder that many believe remains unsolved, and he saw firsthand how interviewing techniques can lead to false testimony and misleading evidence.
“Regardless of whether you are drafting policy, investigating allegations, consulting on a case, or advising an institution on best practices and next steps, you need to remove all emotional barriers and self-interest considerations from this type of work,” Ryan Thompson explains. “You need to design a fair and equitable system to eliminate bias, treat all parties with compassion and respect, and ultimately elicit the truth. We all win when the truth is achieved.”
Thompson believes that to truly combat sexual assault, harassment, discrimination and interpersonal violence in our schools and in our society, we must strive for a system that best seeks the truth, regardless of whether it is the complainant or the respondent who receives a more favorable outcome on any particular case.
3. Investigative Career & Crime:
To some degree, Ryan Thompson has spent his entire adult life investigating crimes and allegations of misconduct. As a college student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he worked with the U.S. Marshals Service, assisting the warrant squad in tracking and apprehending federal fugitives. Graduating in 1999 with a degree in journalism, and a minor in biology, Thompson launched his career in investigative journalism with a controversial article about a violent Salt Lake City subculture entitled “Tattoos, Vegans and Firebombs.” Stolen by one of the internet’s first newswires, the article was reprinted across the country, leading to successful copyright infringement litigation.
Thompson’s career in conducting objective and fact-finding investigations continued on the East Coast. During the final days of street journalism, Thompson became the crime reporter for the Cambridge Chronicle and affiliated newspapers outside of Boston, MA. He won several awards for his writing and reporting, including one from the New England Press Association for coverage of racial and ethnic issues.
It was here that Thompson became immersed in investigating the pedophile organization of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) after a local boy’s abduction and murder. But perhaps most notably – in a story that Thompson has lectured on continuously throughout his career, to middle schools, college honors programs, and even federal law enforcement – Thompson spent several days searching for a missing decapitated head, following a map that was provided to him after interviewing the killer in prison.
Thompson has spent countless hours conducting interviews of criminal defendants, respondents, complainants, plaintiffs and witnesses. He thrives in the interview room as well as in the courtroom, where his diverse professional experience has allowed him to successfully solicit the truth and assess credibility of party and witness testimony.
Even after working as a civil litigator for a Fifth Avenue law firm in Manhattan, Thompson returned to journalism to oversee the legal section of the historic Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper. As legal editor for nearly five years, Thompson helped expand the newspaper, which was widely considered the Brooklyn courts’ paper of record, to covering hard news, including in-depth coverage of murder, mafia and terrorism trials.
While leaving the newspaper industry to move back to his hometown Buffalo, Thompson remained a professional author, analyzing the U.S. courts’ handling of expert witness evidence and Daubert proceedings. His articles covered topics that ranged from poker skills to cryptocurrency to complex patent litigation, and were published in the National Law Review.
4. Credentials & Affiliations:
In addition to the many trainings he has administered himself over the years, Ryan Thompson has spent hundreds of hours undergoing training from a variety of professional organizations and institutions, including law enforcement, law firms, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, United Educators (UE) Insurance, the Clery Center, the State University of New York Student Conduct Institute (SUNY SCI), and the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA).
ATIXA / TNG CONSULTING:
Ryan Thompson is an Advisory Board member of ATIXA and serves on its Publications Committee, in addition to being an Affiliated Consultant with TNG Consulting. He was the recipient of ATIXA’s Distinguished Service Award in 2022.
SPECIAL APPROVALS:
For the 1,600+ American schools that have United Educators (UE) insurance, Ryan Thompson is one of the select few investigators to be pre-approved for sexual misconduct investigations by UE, thereby triggering UE’s $10,000 reimbursement benefit on qualified cases.
ORGANIZATIONS & AFFILIATIONS:
• Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA)
• Association of Workplace Investigators (AWI)
• Bar Association of Erie County (BAEC)
• New York State Bar Association (NYSBA)
EDUCATION:
JD: Brooklyn Law School (2004)
BS: University of Colorado at Boulder (1999)
Studies Abroad: Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland (1997)
High School: Nichols School, Buffalo NY (1995)
The 2020 Title IX Regulations 34 CFR §106.45(b)(10) “requires recipients to publish materials used for training Title IX Coordinators, investigators, decision-makers, and persons who facilitate informal resolutions on the recipient’s website or make these materials available upon request for inspection by members of the public.”
For a list of Thompson’s applicable trainings and links to the materials, go to the Title IX Training page.