Burr Forman's Results Matter Radio

Roundtable Discussion on The Current State of The Legal Profession

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Today was a roundtable discussion on Burr & Forman Results Matter with four top attorneys discussing the current state of the legal profession.

Lee Thuston/Burr & Forman

Michael Sullivan/Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge, & Rice

Michael Sullivan is the Managing Partner of Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge, & Rice‘s Atlanta office. When it comes to senior-level strategic guidance in mass tort product liability litigation and other large-scale commercial litigation, clients turn to Michael.

Michael brings nearly three decades of experience in “bet-the-company” cases. He serves in the role of “outside General Counsel” or Coordinating Counsel, providing big-picture advice to craft successful litigation strategies, increase efficiencies and contain costs. Michael collaborates with clients on a wide range of high-end business problems, including mass tort litigation.

He spent 10 years as National Coordinating Counsel, Chief Litigator and Case Manager guiding a global automotive company through national asbestos friction litigation. In this role, he coordinated the efforts of a national network of 35 defense firms, as well as the company’s in-house legal team.

Michael has particular experience serving the automotive industry, including Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers, as well as closely held and family owned businesses. He also has extensive litigation experience in the software, information technology, pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

Michael is a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel and a Fellow in the Litigation Counsel of America.

Michael Trotter/Taylor English Duma, LLP

Michael H. Trotter is a Partner the “New Model” law firm of Taylor English Duma, LLP. He received his law degree from the Harvard Law School in 1962 and his B.A. degree from Brown University cum laude (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1958. Prior to attending law school, he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the Harvard University Ph.D. Program in American History and was awarded a Master’s Degree in History in 1959. His law practice in Atlanta has focused on corporate transactions and finance, as well as on family business.

Mr. Trotter’s studies of law firm growth and change have combined the perspectives of a successful practicing attorney, an experienced law firm manager, and a historian. As a partner in two of the largest and most successful firms in America (the predecessors of Alston & Bird and of Kilpatrick, Townsend & Stockton) and three entrepreneurial law firms, he has been a keen student of the economics and ethos of modern law practice.

Mr. Trotter has written and spoken frequently on law firm management, operations and economics, and the cost- effective delivery of legal services including “Profit and the Practice of Law” which is the definitive work on growth and change in the legal profession in America between 1960 and 1995, and his soon to be released book “Declining Prospects” about the continuing transformation of the legal profession in the United States. He has also been a columnist for Atlanta’s legal newspaper, The Daily Report, and he is the author of Pig in a Poke? The Uncertain Advantages of Very Large and Highly Leveraged Law Firms in America, which appeared as a chapter in the American Bar Association’s publication, Raise the Bar – Real World Solutions for a Troubled Profession (2007).

His courses in law firm management and economics at the Emory University School of Law in the early 1990s may have been the first, and were certainly among the first, to be taught at a major American law school.

Wayne Hillis, Jr./Parker, Hudson, Rainer & Dobbs LLP

G. Wayne Hillis, Jr. has been in the practice of law in Atlanta, Georgia for 26 years and is a litigation partner with Parker, Hudson, Rainer & Dobbs LLP, where he serves as the managing partner for the firm. Mr. Hillis represents a variety of securities broker/dealers and individual brokers in litigation, handles complex business and commercial dispute litigation, employment litigation and arbitration.

Mr. Hillis has long been an active member of the Atlanta and Georgia Bar Associations. He is a fellow in the Lawyers Foundation of Georgia, a fellow in the Litigation Counsel of America and is Co-Chair of the Minority & Diversity Clerkship Program with the Atlanta Bar Association. Mr. Hillis also serves on the firm’s executive committee, partnership committee and diversity committee.

He received his B.A. degree from the University of Georgia in 1983 and his J.D. degree in 1986 (cum laude) from the University of Georgia School of Law where he was a member of the Editorial Board and Managing Board of the Georgia Law Review.