Thomas M. Bond is a founder and managing partner of the Kaplan/Bond Group in Boston. A trial lawyer and admiralty lawyer who has specialized in maritime and construction personal injury litigation for 35 years, Bond’s trial practice includes admiralty and maritime law, construction, product liability, automobile, personal injury, and general liability. He has tried many cases, and has argued or briefed more than 25 cases before various courts of appeal, including the U.S. Supreme Court (reversing 1st Circuit holding that the dredge digging the Ted Williams tunnel was not a “vessel”), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the Supreme Judicial Court, the Massachusetts Appeals Court, and the Supreme Courts of Connecticut and New Hampshire.
In addition to serving as MBA president for the upcoming year, Bond is a member of the MBA’s Executive Management Board and Budget & Finance Committee. Bond served as co-chair of the MBA’s COVID Response Task Force, which worked with the courts and the bar to establish guidelines for the operation of the courts and provided daily notifications to the legal community of rules and court changes during the pandemic. He has also served as a chair of the MBA’s Judicial Diversity Task Force and as chair of the MBA’s Judicial Administration Section, where he also chaired the section’s Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Diversity, which successfully introduced a resolution at the MBA’s House of Delegates supporting efforts to increase diversity in the court system. Over the past year, he has continued his efforts to improve the legal system by bringing judges and lawyers together, moderating a bench-bar forum with the Flaschner Judicial Institute, and also a question and answer forum with the Chief Justices of the Trial and Superior Courts and other judges on reducing stressors in the courtroom.
Outside the MBA, Bond is a member of the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys (MATA), where he has served on its executive committee and board of governors. He received MATA’s President’s Award in 2014. He is also a member of the American Association for Justice. A frequent lecturer on admiralty law at Suffolk University Law School, Bond has also lectured locally at Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education (MCLE), the Boston Bar Association and the New England School of Law, and nationally before the Tulane Admiralty Law Institute in New Orleans, the American Association for Justice and the American Trial Lawyers Association.
Bond graduated summa cum laude from Northeastern University in 1982, and from Suffolk University Law School in 1985. Bond grew up in Charlton, Mass., and graduated from Shepherd Hill Regional High School in 1977. A lifelong Massachusetts resident, he has lived in Hopkinton for 26 years, where he still resides with his wife of 36 years. They have two grown daughters and one chocolate rescue lab.
In his year as president, Bond will lead the bar's efforts to strengthen its role as a partner to members of the legal profession, with a focus on diversity and inclusion.