John Barkett
Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP
Experience
Mr. Barkett is a partner at the law firm of Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. in its Miami office. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame (B.A. Government, 1972, summa cum laude) and the Yale Law School (J.D. 1975) and served as a law clerk to the Honorable David W. Dyer on the old Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Barkett is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law. Mr. Barkett was a member of the Advisory Committee for Civil Rules of the Federal Judicial Conference from 2012-18, and served on the Discovery Subcommittee that developed the December 1, 2015 amendments to the rules, the Rule 23 Subcommittee that developed the 2018 amendments to Rule 23, and the Rule 30(b)(6) and MDL subcommittees. In August 2019, he completed service for the second time as a member of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility. He is also a member of the American Law Institute. He is a fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, the American College of Civil Trial Mediators, and the American College of Environmental Lawyers. In 2019, Mr. Barkett was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Miami Daily Business Review at its annual legal Professional Excellence awards dinner. Mr. Barkett is a commercial (contract, corporate, and banking disputes, employment, trademark, and antitrust) and environmental lawyer (CERCLA, RCRA, and toxic tort) having handled scores of complex and simple litigation matters in Federal and state courts or before an arbitration tribunal. Mr. Barkett is also a problem solver, serving as an arbitrator, mediator, facilitator, or allocator in a variety of commercial, environmental, and reinsurance contexts. He is a certified mediator under the rules of the Supreme Court of Florida and the Southern and Middle Districts of Florida and a member of the London Court of International Arbitration and the International Council for Commercial Arbitration, and serves on the AAA and ICDR roster of neutrals, and the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution’s “Panel of Distinguished Neutrals.” He has served or is serving as a neutral in scores of matters involving in the aggregate more than $4 billion. He has conducted or is conducting commercial domestic and international arbitrations under AAA, LCIA, ICDR, UNCITRAL, and CPR rules. Mr. Barkett chairs the Miami International Arbitration Society (MIAS) “Task Force on Issues Related to Expedited Arbitration in connection with the UNCITRAL Rules and wrote several reports that were received favorably by the delegates to Working Group II and the UNCITRAL Secretariat in connection with the development of Expedited Arbitration Rules that were finalized in July 2021. In November 2003, Mr. Barkett was appointed by the presiding judge to serve as the Special Master to oversee the implementation and enforcement of the 1992 Consent Decree between the United States and the State of Florida relating to the multi-billion dollar restoration of the Florida Everglades. He has also served as a Special Master for judges on the Southern District of Florida or the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court to address a wide variety of discovery and e-discovery issues in complex litigation.
Licenses
Florida Bar, (1975)