David Pharr
David Pharr has more than twenty years of experience with commercial litigation, business counseling and intellectual property. David was an equity partner with an AmLaw 200 firm, where he spent ten years representing small and large businesses in litigation and transactional matters. He served on the firm’s Litigation and Intellectual Property practice groups, focusing on insurance coverage disputes, financial services, and trademarks, and he worked with the firm’s regional Emerging Growth Companies Team.
His insurance coverage experience includes both property and liability coverage with an emphasis on commercial coverage lines. He has represented numerous clients through complex negotiations and litigation involving allocation of coverage for long-tail claims and disputes among insurers over tangled contractual indemnity clauses and other insurance provisions.
In addition to trial experience with complex litigation involving product liability, construction, employment, healthcare, commercial real estate, and environmental liability, David is well-versed in regulatory and administrative matters. He has represented companies in the gaming and telecommunications industries and has assisted clients navigating land use and zoning ordinances, tax credit financing statutes, privacy statutes, and federal and state transportation funding programs and he delivered regulatory, compliance, and litigation assistance to clients in response to financial services clients in the mortgage foreclosure crisis following the Great Recession.
In solo practice, David has focused on business representation and counseling. His lifelong enthusiasm for economic development and emerging technology has led him to devote significant time and energy toward efforts to grow the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. He served on a tech transfer advisory panel at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, an advisory panel appointed by the Mississippi Secretary of State to craft equity crowdfunding regulation, and as a mentor and judge at Startup Weekend and New Venture Challenge events organized by Innovate Mississippi. David founded and organized the first TEDx event in Mississippi (TEDxJackson). As an adjunct professor, he taught Contract Drafting and Negotiation to first-year students at the University of Mississippi School of Law. David has also devoted time to his own real estate development projects and worked as a consultant on a successful $20 million historic renovation project involving incentives and complex financing.
David uses his diverse experience and passion for his hometown as a civic volunteer, serving terms on the Boards of Directors of the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District and the Central Mississippi Development Corporation, as well as the Jackson Chamber of Commerce, where he also served a one-year term as Chairman of the Board. In 2009, he co-founded a volunteer effort to promote Jackson’s first rails-to-trails project, which is set to begin construction in 2020.
Memberships & Affiliations
Association of University Technology Managers
Mississippi Bar Association
Young Lawyers of the Mississippi Bar, Fellow, Elected 2011
ABA Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section, Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee, Vice-Chair, 2007-2012
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, Board of Directors, 2016-present, Vice-Chair, 2019-present
Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, Board of Directors, 2012-present
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral, Vestry, 2010-2012
Central Mississippi Planning and Development District, Board, 2009-2012
Jackson Chamber of Commerce, Chair, 2009
Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership, Executive Committee, 2009
Leadership Greater Jackson, Board of Trustees, 2007-2009
Jackson Young Lawyers, President, 2007-2008
Mississippi Bar Young Lawyers Division, Board of Governors, 2006-2008
I.S. Sanders (Farish Street) YMCA, Board, 2005-2008
Leadership Greater Jackson, Class of 2005