The Barrister - The Network of Trial Law Firms

SM
2006
superlawyers.com
The Top
YOUNG
LAWYERS
IN
Ohio
In Vino Veritas
Ashley Hess and
Kevin Ghassomian
toast for charity
Brokering Billions
Christopher Hewitt brings
the big deals home
A Geek Squad of One
Ron Raether knows
his bits from his bytes
The Barrister
Tony White is still scoring
from way downtown
TONY WHITE IS STILL SCORING
FROM WAY DOWNTOWN
BARRISTER
the
by KATHRYN DELONG
T
he competitive fire of an Ohio
State power forward still sizzles in Tony White, only now
it’s displayed in court rather
than on the court.
“The closest thing to getting elbowed in the
nose in the Big Ten is to be a trial lawyer,” says
White, partner-in-charge of Thompson Hine’s
Columbus office since June 2005. In basketball, “you’re fighting tooth and nail for two
hours to win a game. It takes the same kind of
preparation and dedication to win a jury trial.”
He relishes the competition, says Chris
White, his wife of nearly 11 years. “I’ve never
known anyone who plays as hard and works
as hard as Tony does. When it’s time to do
work, he’s all work. He doesn’t show his dimples when he’s working.”
White played for the Ohio State University
basketball team for four years, serving as captain for the 1988-89 season, his senior year. As
a junior, he announced his intention to go to
law school. “I was nervously confident I would
get in,” he says. “Dick Vitale gave me the nickname ‘The Barrister’ my entire senior year.”
Vitale, the famously exciteable college basketball analyst for ABC Sports and ESPN,
named him well. After earning two undergraduate degrees (in business finance and
business marketing), White went on to
Northwestern University School of Law. He
graduated in 1993 and joined the Columbus
office of Kegler, Brown, Hill & Ritter. He
practiced there until January 2004, when he
left for Thompson Hine.
Calling the Shots
At 38, White is one of the youngest partners-in-charge in the history of Thompson
Hine. And he’s one of only two black attorneys
in Columbus to lead a major law firm — the
other being Alex Shumate of Squires Sanders.
He’s also the on-air college basketball analyst for NewsRadio 610 WTVN, which means
that six months out of the year, the Ohio State
Buckeyes are never far from his mind. “I’m
such a fan of college basketball and a fan of
Ohio State basketball,” White says. “There
are few moments away from the practice of
law that I’m not doing something related to
college basketball. It’s part of my life.”
For a time, he’d hoped that professional
basketball would be a part of his life as well.
Although his father, the late Al White, was a
Franklin County prosecutor who handled such
high-profile cases as that of serial rapist Dr.
Edward F. Jackson, White’s dream was to be a
professional athlete. “Every scholarship basketball player wants to play in the NBA,” he says.
“But I only averaged about 10 points a game. I
was smart enough to realize you didn’t play in
the NBA averaging 10 points a game.”
That’s when he began to ask himself, “What
am I good at?” It occurred to him that reporters
sought him out for interviews because he could
articulate what had gone on during games.
Perhaps, he thought, he could turn his communication skills into a career as a trial lawyer.
Keeps on Truckin’
Today, White specializes in complex business litigation with an emphasis on employment and transportation/trucking. After
arriving at Thompson Hine, White set up a
Motor Carrier Emergency Response Team,
consisting of trial lawyers and accident reconstruction experts available 24/7 to be dispatched wherever an accident occurs.
Getting to the site before the wreckage has
been cleared away or snow has covered up the
tracks allows the firm to assess the truth of the
situation, he says. “I tell them to go find out
what happened. We’ll deal with the facts. Our
real enemy is not having the information to
find the truth. When you fill in the gaps by
guessing, sometimes you get it wrong.”
This innovative service provides “instant
capability to respond to a catastrophic event
like a truck accident,” says White, whose
largest client is R+L Carriers, based in
Wilmington, Ohio. “We had clients who
needed it but didn’t know they needed it. It’s
a very successful program.”
Although he’d been at Thompson Hine a
relatively short time, White was the logical
candidate when the firm sought a new partner-in-charge. It was an easy choice, says
David Hooker, Thompson Hine’s managing
partner in the Cleveland office. “Tony obviously is a natural leader, and we saw that in
his client work and his work in the firm.”
Two aspects of leadership are important in a
partner-in-charge, Hooker says. One is to be a
leader in the office, working with the partners,
associates and staff to focus on client service,
which is the No. 1 goal. “He has been able to
communicate that very effectively.”
The other is to be a leader outside the
office. “We wanted to raise the profile of the
Columbus office, and Tony has high name
recognition in the Columbus community.”
White jumped at the opportunity. When
Hooker asked him to take the position, “I
thought about it for about 10 seconds,” he says.
That’s about as long as it took him, back in
1997, to accept the on-air analyst role at
WTVN. The radio gig came about after White
made a few appearances on one of the AM station’s sports shows; based on his performances,
he was later called upon to analyze the firing of
Buckeye basketball coach Randy Ayers.
“Nobody called in and said, ‘Get that moron off
the air,’” White recalls, smiling. “The station
didn’t explode.”
On the contrary, “Tony is very polished on
the air,” says WTVN Sports Director George
Lehner, who has been in Columbus for 30 years
and remembers White as a high school basketball player. “He knows basketball, and as a trial
attorney, he knows how to bluff his way through
anything if he doesn’t know the answers.”
But White doesn’t need to do a lot of bluffing. “I have to keep up on Ohio State basketball, on their opponents and how they’re doing,
and how Ohio State is viewed nationally,” he
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GARY KESSLER
says. He also has to know who the best players
are in the nation, “and I have to be able to
compile and digest the information to be able
to talk about it.” All of it takes a “decent
amount of time during a six-month period.”
At times he ends up multitasking like a madman. In the first round of this year’s NCAA
tournament in Dayton, for example, the
Buckeyes played on a weekday, and during
halftime, he was on his Treo, e-mailing clients.
If Big Ten basketball champ Ohio State hadn’t
lost to Georgetown in the second round, he
gladly would have kept up the frenetic pace. He
never secretly hopes for a Buckeye loss, even if
that would mean getting the chance to slow
down. “I can always work at night,” he says.
When he was a sophomore, his team also
lost to Georgetown in the second round of the
NCAA. And when he was a senior, the
Buckeyes were ranked 11th in the nation
before their leading scorer and point guard Jay
Burson broke his neck after getting fouled from
behind while going in for a breakaway lay-up.
The game was on the road in Iowa, toward the
end of the regular season. “Jay lost his balance
and slid into the base of the basket. He cracked
his back and neck on the base and fractured
one of the vertebrae.” At the time, nobody
realized how hurt Burson was, White says. “He
said, ‘My neck hurts.’ I’m telling him, ‘Don’t be
a wimp, you’re fine.’ The next day, Jay is in a
halo because his neck is broken.”
That was the end of the Buckeyes’ NCAA
dreams that year. They went from anticipating
the big dance to competing in the lesser NIT.
“It’s one thing to lose your point guard and
one thing to lose your leading scorer. When
you lose both, you’ve got real problems.”
The 2005-06 Buckeyes were a better team
than White’s — quicker, faster, higher jumpers.
He predicts that with the Buckeyes’ stellar
recruiting class, they’ll be in the Top 10 or 15 in
the nation next season and will be fighting once
again for the Big Ten Championship.
Staying in the Game
After his college hoops career, the 6-foot8-inch forward stayed in the game by playing
on an exhibition team with some of his former Ohio State teammates. They traveled
by van to Division 1 schools, while White sat
in the back, holding a flashlight and reading
depositions. He’d come home with sore muscles and his body covered in bruises. “My
body would take such a beating at my
advanced age,” he says. But he loved the
competition. “I did that for almost 10 years,
into my mid-30s. I would go on a court with
guys I played with when I was 22 in front of
12,000 to 15,000 people. It was something I
couldn’t pass up.” When the NCAA stopped
sponsoring exhibition teams, “it all went
As a college basketball analyst,
White has to be an expert on all
aspects of the Buckeyes.
“The closest thing to getting elbowed
in the nose in the Big Ten is to be
a trial lawyer,” says White.
away, which was good for me,” White says.
“I probably would have torn something.”
Beyond basketball, he’s a big fan of the
Washington Redskins (he was born in
Washington, D.C.). He also likes baseball and
plays some golf. “I thought I would be great at
golf,” White says. “The ball just sits there,
nobody hits you. I’ll be fine, no problem.” He
chuckles ruefully. “I’m still working on the
game of golf.”
To get in practice time on the links, he has
only to step outside his Gahanna home onto
the Jefferson Country Club course. He and
Chris live near the women’s 18th tee box, not
far from the clubhouse.
White turns 39 in September, the same
month he and Chris celebrate their 11th
anniversary. They dated in high school, at
Watkins Memorial in Pataskala, which is
about 15 miles east of Columbus.
The couple has two sons, Donovan, 8,
and Marcus, 3 (both tall for their ages, of
course), with another child due in June at
the time this magazine goes to press. The
kids have heard their father on the radio and
have seen him on TV; the latter was in an
ESPN Classics clip of him in his Buckeye
days. Donovan’s only comment was, “Wow,
Daddy has fluffy hair,” Chris reports with a
laugh. “They keep us grounded.”
Not that her husband needs a lot of grounding. Despite his excessively busy life, “he’s a
free, easygoing spirit,” she says. “Tony is so
even keel. He assesses everything that needs to
be done. He prioritizes. He just does it.”
Perhaps that’s all part of his team spirit.
White says hard work and a team-first attitude
make the difference in everything a person
does. “I was a decent player because I worked
very hard at what I did. I wasn’t the best player on the team by any stretch, but I was always
willing to put the team in front of myself.”
Reprinted from the July 2006 issue of Ohio Super Lawyers - Rising Stars Edition. ©2006 Key Professional Media, Inc. Reprinted with permission. All Rights Reserved. Super Lawyers® is a registered trademark of Key Professional Media, Inc.