Associate, King & Spalding, Atlanta, GA
Clerk, Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, 2011-12
When David Barnes moved to Washington, D.C., in summer 2011 to start a clerkship with Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, it was his second move to Washington. After earning his undergraduate degree at Sewanee in 2005, Barnes had served a six-month internship in the White House Office of the Public Liaison. “I had written a paper for an environmental science class that I presented at an academic conference,” he said. “A fellow Sewanee graduate working in the White House read the paper and invited me to interview for an internship.” As a White House intern, Barnes not only gained invaluable insights into the formation and promotion of public policy, but he also met and impressed Pete Delay, CEO of Nashville-based Sherman-Dixie Concrete Industries. When the internship ended, Delay offered Barnes a permanent job with Sherman-Dixie in Nashville.
Barnes spent four years performing due diligence work to support mergers and acquisitions for Sherman-Dixie, a job for which he had an aptitude, before starting law school at Vanderbilt. He had planned to attend law school after gaining some work experience, and his work at Sherman-Dixie confirmed his interest in studying law and also an ideal preparation for legal studies.
Barnes was debating the merits of pursuing a J.D. or a four-year J.D./MBA program when Vanderbilt’s Law and Business Program caught his eye. “The Law and Business Program offers non-legal core classes in accounting and finance,” he said. “You learn how to read financial statements. And when you combine that with the courses in corporations, securities law and secured lending, you graduate with an understanding of the issues that are important to CEOs.” The program also had the advantage of allowing Barnes, who had majored in religion and environmental science as an undergraduate, to gain a solid understanding of basic accounting and financing principles while earning his law degree without extending his studies past three years.
Barnes particularly enjoyed the Law and Business Seminar taught by Professors Randall Thomas and Paul Edelman, during which students are required to write five scholarly papers based on current research presented to the class by corporate law scholars from around the world. “It’s a fantastic seminar—very writing-intense,” he says. Barnes also had the opportunity to work with Professor Thomas as a research assistant on two major papers, and took short courses from Judge Kent Jordan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Wilmington, Delaware, and from Chancellor William Chandler and Vice-Chancellor Leo Strine of the Delaware Court of Chancery. “When I was developing my Law Review Note, which focused on the officers and directors of partially government-owned corporations, I talked with Chancellor Chandler for over an hour about my ideas,” Barnes said. “I sent him a copy of the draft, and he and his law clerks commented on it and sent it back. Their feedback was really invaluable, and the fact that I had access to them was amazing.”
During two summers working at law firms as an associate, Barnes discovered his business acumen attracted favorable attention. “When senior attorneys realize you can read a financial statement and have a business background, they seek you out, because when you look at the facts of the case, you may have a business problem with a legal solution or a legal problem with a business solution,” he said. “Since joining King and Spalding’s Business Litigation / Appellate Litigation group, I’ve focused primarily in areas involving issues of corporate law. I can’t adequately express how much taking classes directly from some of the top names in the field–Randall Thomas, Judge Jordan, Chancellor Chandler and now-Chancellor Strine–has helped me with this work. Like any young lawyer, I’m trying to develop an expertise or focus that partners seek out, and VLS’s Law and Business classes enabled me do that.”
Barnes, who won the 2011 Founders Medal, encourages students to pursue a clerkship to boost their knowledge, skills and careers. “Without my appellate experience with Judge Henderson on the D.C. circuit, I don’t think I would have had this opportunity to litigate complex legal issues before sophisticated federal courts,” he said. “And the experience made me a better lawyer, As a clerk, you quickly realize which arguments are persuasive and which are not, and that starts to shape your thinking as to how to structure cases.”