Baker Donelson litigator Tom comes full circle

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 30, 2013

Robert Tom, commercial and business litigation attorney for Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz PC, has been elected shareholder of the law firm.

The 35-year-old Tom grew up in Memphis and attended Memphis University School before going to Emory University in Atlanta to study business and finance. Becoming an attorney was never even on his radar screen.

“It really happened by chance,” he said. “I was keeping my options open.”

A friend was taking the LSAT at the time and Tom decided “on a whim” to take the test as well. The test went well and he took a job as a paralegal after graduation before leaving for New Orleans and Tulane University Law School, where he graduated cum laude in 2004.

“Being a business major, I wanted to do something related to that field or use that background for the type of work I’d be practicing in law,” Tom said. “The first place I started practicing, the litigation they did there was business-related litigation, so it happened by chance that the type of law that I was interested in practicing was the type of law the firm was doing.”

But that firm wasn’t in Memphis. Nor was it in New Orleans. Tom’s future wife, Margaret, a Florida native, had applied to medical schools and her first choice was in Tampa … (read more)