Thomas E. Spahn

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Tom practices as a commercial litigator. He regularly advises a number of 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. Tom 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 conflict of interest, confidentiality, and dealing with corporate wrongdoing.

Tom was selected as the 2013 metro-Washington DC "Lawyer of the Year" for "Bet the Company Litigation" by The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/White, Inc.).

Tom has written several editions of a book on the attorney client privilege and the work product doctrine, as well as books on defamation and ethics issues facing in-house lawyers. He has published several book chapters and more than 75 articles in Virginia and national publications on numerous topics. The ABA's General Practice Section honored Tom’s article on “Litigation Ethics in the Modern Age” as one of the "Best Articles Published by the ABA" in 2004.

Since 1988, Tom has spoken at more than 1,000 CLE programs throughout the United States, and in several foreign countries. In March 2009, Tom was invited to Reykjavik, Iceland, to discuss an ethics issue on Iceland's leading news and interview show. In July 2012, he was invited to Erbil, Iraq, to participate in a panel assisting the Kurdistan Bar Association in establishing ethics rules.

Tom has served on the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, and on numerous Virginia State Bar and Virginia Bar Association committees. As chairman of the Virginia State Bar Committee on Publications/Public Information, Tom led the committee in developing public service announcements articulating lawyers' benefit to society, which were extensively published in Virginia, and purchased by the bars of six other states and the Canadian Bar Association. As chairman of the Virginia Bar Association Commission on Professionalism, he acted as principal drafter of Principles of Professionalism that have been endorsed by the Virginia Supreme Court and the Virginia Attorney General's Office, and commended by both of Virginia's federal district courts.

After personally reading, summarizing, and categorizing more than 1,600 Virginia Bar Legal Ethics Opinions, he made his work available to the public online.