Leo Bearman Jr.
The Flyer has learned that Leo Bearman Jr., a lion of the Memphis legal profession and co-founder and senior counsel of the law firm Baker, Donelson, Caldwell, and Berkowitz, has died at Baptist Hospital at age 85. Cause of death was not immediately known.
Mr. Bearman had been selected this month to receive the prestigious 2020 American Inns Court Lewis F. Powell Jr. Award for Professionalism and Ethics. The award, which recognizes exemplary service in the areas of professionalism, ethics, civility, and excellence in the legal profession, is one of the many that came the way of the distinguished lawyer.
A 1957 graduate, magna cum laude, from Yale University, Bearman received a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1960. After school, he returned to his native Memphis to practice law with his father, Leo Bearman Sr., and the two of them merged their firm with another in the foundation of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz.
Bearman’s areas of expertise included civil litigation, class action defense, government matters, insurance defense litigation, products liability defense, intellectual property litigation, professional negligence defense, and commercial litigation.
He had served as counsel of record for the city of Memphis and MLGW before the Supreme Court in actions concerning the city’s groundwater supply, and handled numerous other important cases. He was also an adjunct professor at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis.
More information will be supplied as it is received. Canale Funeral Directors are handling arrangements.
