Michael R. Smith

Dan Diffley serves as co-chair of Alston & Bird’s Litigation & Trial Practice Group. A courtroom veteran, he focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation, including class action defense, insurance matters, products liability, professional malpractice, and other commercial disputes. As lead trial counsel, he has extensive experience representing Fortune 500 companies at trial, arbitration, and every other facet of commercial litigation. In nearly 20 years of practice, he...

Jason S. Lichtstein serves as Office Managing Partner of Akerman LLP’s Atlanta office. A seasoned environmental attorney with more than 25 years of experience, Jason focuses his practice on the cleanup and redevelopment of Brownfields and other contaminated sites in the Southeast U.S. His practice includes a broad range of environmental transactional, environmental regulatory compliance, and state incentives matters and in emerging, cutting-edge environmental law and policy developments...

Michele Madison provides general legal advice to health systems on various regulatory and business matters. Michele has significant experience in managing legal issues arising in hospitals, physician offices or integrated health systems, including employment, investigations, risk management assessment and corporation management. She provides legal education for health systems’ medical staff, management teams and employees and often facilitates and manages implementation of compliance pl...

George L. Murphy, Jr. is a top attorney recognized by Best Lawyers in the practice area(s) of Commercial Litigation, Litigation - Intellectual Property, Mass Tort Litigation / Class Actions - Defendants and Product Liability Litigation - Defendants. George L., who practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, has been recognized since 2012. This recognition is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey, reflecting the high esteem in which George L. is held by other top lawyers in the same geographic and ...

Alex Peurach leverages her significant trial experience to help her clients navigate their most complex business disputes, providing strategic and creative advice and delivering exceptional results that achieve her clients’ business objectives. Alex is an experienced trial attorney, having won cases in state and federal courts and arbitrations throughout the country. She represents clients across multiple industries on both the plaintiff and defense sides, with a particular focus on paym...

Eileen Hintz Rumfelt is a member in the firm's Litigation Practice and concentrates her practice in the area of complex commercial litigation with a special focus on intellectual property litigation and white collar crime and corporate investigations. She regularly advises her colleagues and clients on the management of eDiscovery issues in commercial litigation. Ms. Rumfelt represents both large and small national, regional and international companies in a variety of industries, including ph...

Heather Friedman focuses her practice on the resolution of complex environmental issues from a business and real estate perspective. Her practice includes both transactional and compliance work associated with the acquisition, development, disposition, management and financing of properties and companies with environmental issues throughout the country. Her practice involves both developed and underutilized environmentally impacted properties for use as industrial, retail, hotel, office, resi...

Bob Mowrey represents clients facing complex environmental and energy matters, including litigation, enforcement and regulatory advice. His preeminence in his field has been recognized with listings in Best Lawyers in America; Chambers USA America’s Leading Business Lawyers; Who’s Who Legal; Legal 500; and LawDragon. Prior to becoming a founding partner of the firm, Bob spent 21 years practicing at Alston & Bird, LLP, a national Am Law 100 firm, where he was the long-time chai...

Kara Kennedy is counsel on Alston & Bird’s Litigation & Trial Practice Team. Kara represents clients in state and federal courts across the country and has experience with a wide range of litigation matters, including complex commercial litigation, consumer class actions, antitrust, products liability, internal investigations and insurance coverage disputes. She focuses her practice on consumer fraud class actions, with a particular emphasis on strategies for organizing and mana...

Sidney Welch is a nationally recognized strategic advisor to large specialty physician practices & associations and technology companies in their cutting edge and traditional healthcare, transactional, and litigation needs. She serves as strategic regulatory counsel, providing counsel to clients regarding tomorrow’s healthcare, including mhealth and digital health ventures; telehealth; precision medicine; artificial intelligence & machine learning; data aggregation & analyti...