Attorney David Burgess grew up the middle of three boys in Devon, in the far southwest corner of England, a rural area where his dad was a police officer. In high school he studied French and was a sprinter, running the two hundred meters and 4×100 meters relay. He was the first in his family to attend university, choosing the University of Birmingham, in the UK’s second largest city, where he did not know a soul and enjoyed his first experience of urban living.
In England, David continued to study French and law, where law is a three-year undergraduate degree. Given his pursuit of French studies in university, his program was a four-year degree where his third year was spent at the University of Limoges in France. When asked why law, David suspects his father’s profession had some influence in his choice. At the University of Birmingham, he recalls especially enjoying criminal law classes and discussing them with his father.
His quest for exploration continued during university summer breaks as David took his first plane trip, traveling to the US where he worked as a camp counselor at what was then called Pine Tree Camp for Crippled Children. He loved Maine and his summers on the water working with children. At the end of his first summer at the camp, he drove with four other British counselors to California and back, before returning to England. It was at Pine Tree Camp that he met his first wife, a nurse, to whom he was married for more than 30 years and had two children.
After completing university, David moved to the United States and got a job teaching French, coaching soccer and being a dorm parent at a private boarding school in Bath, Maine. He then entered the insurance industry where he worked for three years while attending Suffolk University Law School at night to earn his US law degree. David excelled in law school, was a member of the Suffolk Law Review, and graduated first in a class of 213 students. His academic success opened doors, and he received job offers from several of the largest Boston law firms.
He spent the final summer of law school working as a summer associate at Foley Hoag. At the end of that summer Foley Hoag offered him the unique opportunity to join the incoming class of associates as he completed his final semester of law school. After being admitted to the bar he worked at Foley Hoag for five years. The associate program presented an incredible learning opportunity with broad exposure including in business litigation and bankruptcy. He recalls the opportunity to be the only associate working with one of the firm’s star trial attorneys on an arbitration in California as a formative experience. He later joined the boutique Boston litigation firm of Dwyer, Collora and Gertner, where he continued to focus on business litigation while also representing clients in employment and white-collar criminal matters.
Living in Concord, MA with his children ages 11 and 9, David made a career and life decision to open his own practice. He was fortunate to have built and maintained strong relationships with contacts in the firms he had worked for and with lawyers who had been on the other side of his cases, and found he was in an enviable position to secure referrals from these attorneys in employment, civil and business litigation matters. Having his own practice provided the flexibility to coach his children and their classmates and later to be the team photographer for the high school football and hockey teams. Given how much he enjoyed criminal defense, he completed the requirements to be a bar advocate handling assigned criminal defense cases. He represented criminal defendants in more than 50 jury trials in the superior and district courts.
David describes jury work as both interesting and especially gratifying, acknowledging the success he has had during his career. He consciously built his practice to serve the legal needs of the community in which he lived while including the aspects of law that he most enjoyed which included private criminal cases and complex litigation matters involving individuals and families. His journey as a coach and active parent in his community naturally led to referrals for family law matters including divorce, domestic abuse and custody agreements.
A former partner at WCN recruited David to join the firm where he has built his practice, now about 80% family law. His focus has been to attempt to resolve family law matters in a more constructive and positive manner, recognizing that in this arena a trial should be a last resort. David is a divorce mediator and attempts to employ a constructive problem-solving approach to all of his cases, whether acting as an advocate or as a mediator. With WCN’s large practice in providing Private Client Services, David has built a niche in prenuptial and postnuptial agreements which help clients entering into marriage to integrate effective strategies and plans to protect wealth and effectively transfer wealth to the next generation.
When not practicing law, David is active, whether on the ski slopes of Maine or skiing out West or on the bike (he and his wife regularly ride on and off road and on fat bikes in winter). They have gone back to David’s roots as a summer camp counselor, recently buying a home on East Pond, in Oakland Maine, where David envisions retirement could be spent paddle boarding and biking in Central Maine and sea kayaking on Maine’s beautiful coast. David has qualified and run the Boston Marathon five times and is training for a half marathon this October as he sets his sights on qualifying for Boston again. Combining his wife’s love of travel with his love of photography, they have explored many vacation destinations including Cuba, the most photogenic vacation to date according to David.
In getting to know more about David Burgess, you cannot help but conclude that he is an explorer and a lifelong learner. From leaving rural Devon to attend university in the UK’s second city to working by day and earning his law degree at night, David works hard and takes risks. He lives life to the fullest and has thoughtfully designed his life and work to challenge him while enabling the flexibility to visit his elderly parents back in Devon. It is as he talks about his parents that you glean a bit more into this life-long learner quality. He reflects on all the wisdom that older people have to offer and hints at his desire to capture that knowledge. This part of the conversation logically leads to David sharing his favorite movie, The Straight Story, a biographical road drama film directed by David Lynch.
If you have a family law, business law or employment law matter, learn more about David Burgess the attorney and his legal experience and background here.