John E. Stephenson, Jr. is a trial lawyer and represents plaintiffs and defendants in complex commercial litigation, including litigation arising from mergers and acquisitions, financial services transactions, intellectual property rights, and agency and fiduciary relationships. He also has substantial experience in corporate governance and financial fraud investigations. Mr. Stephenson served on the executive committee for the Enron Examination, where his leadership responsibilities included investigating and reporting on the roles of Enron’s financial institutions, officers and directors, and accounting professionals. This investigation resulted in the identification of more than $7 billion in potential claims against these parties and others. He has been selected by his peers for inclusion in Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers magazine, Georgia Legal Elite: Georgia’s Most Effective Lawyers for his plaintiffs’ practice, The International Who’s Who of Commercial Litigators, and Who’s Who Legal: Georgia 2007 for commercial litigation, where he was one of only eight Georgia trial lawyers selected for inclusion.
Mr. Stephenson maintains a national practice and serves as lead counsel in complex litigation on behalf of public and private companies and individuals throughout the country. His international litigation experience includes cases against one of the largest state-owned corporations in the People’s Republic of China, litigation against Saudi Arabian financial institutions, the representation of the CEO of one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, and mass disaster litigation in Nova Scotia, Nairobi, Kenya and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Mr. Stephenson also leads the firm’s plaintiffs’ litigation practice and represents plaintiffs in a wide range of complex business litigation, wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases, including aviation disasters. Since 2000, the plaintiffs’ litigation practice has obtained more than $2 billion in verdicts and settlements on behalf of corporate and individual clients.
Mr. Stephenson is a frequent lecturer on trial advocacy techniques, jury selection, ethics and professionalism, accountant liability, spoliation of evidence, electronic data retrieval, business tort litigation and appellate practice and procedure.
Mr. Stephenson received his J.D., with honors, from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1984, where he received the Order of the Coif Award and was a member of the Law Review. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina in 1981.
He is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Trial Lawyer’s Association, the Old Warhorse Lawyer’s Club and the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Georgia. He serves on the board of the University of North Carolina School of Law and is an alumni advisor for the University of North Carolina undergraduate college. He is active in the United Way, where he is a member of the Alexis de Tocqueville Society, and has chaired the firm’s United Way campaign. In 2005, Mr. Stephenson was honored by the ACLU for his pro bono representation of plaintiffs in civil rights litigation. In 2006, he received the Outstanding Service Award from the Stonewall Bar Association for his work on equal rights litigation.