James M. "Jim" Bowie

To say Pete is persistent is an understatement: He focuses all day, every day on bringing his real estate clients great results. And the greater the challenge and more complex the matter, the better. Case in point: After more than four years of intense, complicated work, involving multiple moving parts and players, Pete was able to help a client bring two large-scale renewable energy projects online in Maine. Pete thrives on solving the seemingly unsolvable, and brings confidence, honesty, an...

Having worked as an urban planner, as chair of the Portland Zoning Board, and inside state government, Phil is well acquainted with municipal and land use law. That experience, combined with his legal expertise, makes him extremely adept at counseling municipal officials and boards and obtaining land use approvals at local, state, and federal levels for real estate developers and property owners. And he’s just as equipped to help clients with legislative issues: he helped draft and pass...

Maybe it started with his knack for math, but Kelly has always loved solving problems. And he’s good at it. He is a powerful analytical thinker and revels in solving highly technical challenges. As a lawyer, Kelly puts those skills to work on behalf of his clients to help resolve a wide range of disputes. Kelly’s practice focuses on litigation involving commercial, bankruptcy, boundary and construction issues. He works directly with clients and in-house counsel and has represented...

Dave Barry is a partner in Pierce Atwood’s Litigation Practice Group. Dave served as the firm’s managing partner from 2016 through 2025. Previously, Dave was chair of the firm’s Litigation Practice Group and chaired the firm’s Government Investigations and White Collar Criminal Defense practice. Dave has managed complex business litigation in federal and state courts and has extensive experience assisting clients with government enforcement and compliance matters invol...

David Soley leads Bernstein Shur’s Real Estate Litigation Group, is the author of the American Bar Association’s nationally acclaimed Real Estate Litigation Handbook and is recognized by Best Lawyers in America for his work in Real Estate Litigation. Mr. Soley concentrates his practice in the areas of business, real estate and constitutional litigation. He regularly represents entrepreneurs and property owners in disputes over boundaries, titles, easements, mortgage priorities, pa...

Emily Cooke’s practice focuses on commercial transactions, compliance, and corporate governance for a range of clients, including banks and other financial institutions, health care organizations, insurance industry participants, educational institutions, nonprofit entities, and small businesses. She negotiates third-party vendor contracts for banking services, negotiates master services agreements for outsourcing critical processing functions for national bank and insurers, and provide...

After clerking for Maine Supreme Court Justice Robert Clifford for a year after law school, Mike dove straight into construction law, defending architects and engineers in construction cases at a small Portland insurance defense firm. Since joining Bernstein Shur a decade and a half ago, Mike has had the pleasure of representing the full panoply of participants on a construction project: developers, owners, general contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, lenders, and sureties in everything fr...

Joseph G. Carleton, Jr. is a top attorney recognized by Best Lawyers in the practice area(s) of Community Association Law and Real Estate Law. Joseph G., who practices law in Portland, Maine, has been recognized since 2021. This recognition is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey, reflecting the high esteem in which Joseph G. is held by other top lawyers in the same geographic and legal practice area.

Bob Mittel is the senior member of the firm. Following two years of service in the Army during the late 1960’s, he practiced with Pine Tree Legal Assistance until 1976, devoting the majority of his efforts to welfare and civil rights litigation in both state and federal courts. Since 1977, the majority of his work has been in the fields of intellectual property, compliance & defense work for debt collectors, and business and probate litigation. Bob has argued cases in a variety of s...

Ben Marcus is a highly experienced transactional attorney. Ben has 33 years of experience representing clients throughout North America in complex commercial arrangements including equity and asset transactions on the buy and sell side, joint venture and development agreements, workouts and restructurings, and contract preparation and review (including the negotiation and execution of Saas and other hosted agreements, and hotel management agreements). Ben has represented companies in many dif...