Thomas E. Spahn, McGuireWoods LLP
Thomas E. Spahn graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and earned his J.D. from Yale Law School. He has practiced as a commercial litigator with McGuireWoods since graduating from Yale, trying cases involving such disparate matters as damage to James Madison's birthplace, the experimental nature of autologous bone marrow transplants for treating breast cancer, and easement rights over America's most popular walking and biking path.

Mr. Spahn regularly advises Fortune 500 companies on such issues as properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections when conducting corporate investigations, when hiring outside consultants, when dealing with the government, and during other daily and extraordinary situations. He has assisted in creating and defending privilege logs in many product liability and commercial litigation matters. He also advises in-house counsel on ethics issues, including conflicts of interest, confidentiality, dealing with corporate wrongdoing, and compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.

Mr. Spahn has written and lectured widely on such topics as ethics, professionalism, attorney-client privilege, work product doctrine, defamation, and legal writing. He has written several editions of a book on the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine, a book on Virginia defamation law, and over 70 articles in Virginia and national publications. The ABA's General Practice Section honored Mr. Spahn's article on Litigation Ethics in the Modern Age as one of the "Best Articles Published by the ABA" in 2004. Since 1988, Mr. Spahn has spoken at more than 1,000 CLE programs throughout the United States and in several foreign countries.

Mr. Spahn has served on the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and has consistently been named one of the "Best Lawyers in America" for each of the past six years.