JOHN G. POWELL, ESQ.
At the age of 41, I decided to leave my career in mortgage banking and commercial real estate in order to study law. The next few years were a blur, balancing law school, full-time work and the reality of being a single parent to two teenage boys. With the enthusiastic help of my sons (who wouldn't let me watch television until my homework was done), I graduated from the University of Denver College of Law in 1988. Somehow during this process I served as Editor in Chief of the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy and was on the school's regional champion moot court trial team, winning the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (no relation) American College of Trial Lawyers Medal for Excellence in Advocacy.
Upon graduation from law school, I spent six years as an associate in a boutique civil litigation firm where I gained invaluable experience as a litigator. I am also a widely experienced transactional attorney and businessman with strong entrepreneurial instincts. I have an extensive background in negotiation, documentation and execution of sophisticated domestic and international business transactions, real estate development, finance, corporate governance, and administration. In utilizing this experience, I have developed a problem solving approach for my clients which includes taking a very wide view of a given situation, whether a serious problem or a marvelous opportunity, carefully considering all foreseeable possibilities, and then structuring a response designed to meet each client's specific goals.
As an example of this approach, many of my clients are small businesses owners and I discovered that they were not adequately served by their previous counsel when it came to estate planning - the succession problems and opportunities available to successful business owners, it seemed, were not being addressed. This prompted me to educate myself in the estate planning arena so that I could more fully serve my clients. Estate planning now constitutes a significant portion of my practice and I find it very fulfilling to help my clients achieve peace of mind in this area.
For the past twelve years or so it has been a great pleasure to serve as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Denver Sturm College Of Law, serving as the coach of the school's Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition team. This is a world-wide competition in which the students prepare and argue a case involving sophisticated international law issues as if they were before the International Court of Justice. I take great pride in the team's accomplishments. They have been regional champions for 3 of the last ten years, regional runner-up 4 of the last ten years, and team members have ranked 6th and 18th in the world-wide best oralist competition. I often describe my teaching as the nearest thing I have to a hobby, though I also love travel, music and history.