A nationally recognized voice on technology in legal education, April Dawson is a Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Howard Law AI Initiative at the Howard University School of Law. Before joining Howard in August 2026, she spent 19 years on the faculty of North Carolina Central University School of Law, where she served as the inaugural Associate Dean of Technology and Innovation and led the creation and growth of the NCCU Technology Law & Policy Center (TLPC). Under her leadership, the TLPC launched the Law and Technology Certificate Program, and NCCU Law was named the #1 Most Innovative Law School by National Jurist’s preLaw Magazine (October 2025) and recognized in the December 2025 ABA AI Task Force Report on AI in the Practice of Law as the first law school in the U.S. to offer an AI Governance course—taught by Dawson—preparing students for the IAPP AI Governance Professional (AIGP) certification exam.

She graduated cum laude from the Howard University School of Law in 1994, where she was on the editorial board of the Howard Law Journal and a member of the National Moot Court Team. After law school, she joined the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice through the Attorney General's Honors Program, where she argued cases before the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits. In 1996, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, after which she joined a Washington, D.C., law firm as a litigation associate and taught legal writing as an adjunct at the George Washington University School of Law. In 1999, she moved to North Carolina to start a private practice dedicated to representing employees in cases involving sexual harassment, discrimination, and related disputes. She joined the NCCU Law faculty in 2006 and taught a wide range of courses, including Artificial Intelligence and the Law, AI Governance, Legal Technology Equity and Leadership, Constitutional Law, Supreme Court Seminar, Torts, Administrative Law, and Voting Rights. She was voted Professor of the Year multiple times.

Her interest in technology traces back to her undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Bennett College and her work as a computer programmer at Los Alamos National Laboratory prior to law school. She is the author of Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity (Aspen, 2023) and the co-author, with Dan Linna, of Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning (Aspen, 2026).

She has presented several Association of American Law Schools (AALS) webinars, including Teaching with Technology for Maximum Student Engagement, Tech Productivity Tips for Law Faculty, and The Paperless Law Prof, and has served on the ABA TECHSHOW panels Skills Building: Best Practices for Teaching Tech to Law Students and Tech Forward: New Jobs for New Lawyers. She has chaired the North Carolina Bar Association's Future of Law Committee and the AALS Section on Technology, Law and Legal Education, and served on the Governing Council of the ABA Center for Innovation. She was named a 2026 ABA Legal Rebel, a 2024 vLex Fastcase 50 Honoree, and a 2022 ABA Women of Legal Tech Honoree, and received the 2021 AALS Technology, Law and Legal Education Section Award. For many years she co-hosted the Legal Eagle Review radio show on WNCU 90.7 FM with her NCCU colleague Irving Joyner, featuring weekly interviews on law-related concerns affecting the local community as well as state and national audiences.