Born and raised in Carrollton, Georgia, Darren learned early on from a family business that dedication was essential to any type of undertaking. Darren excelled in debate, earning him a scholarship to Emory University in Atlanta. After finishing at the top of his law school class at Georgia State University, he worked for seven years in the Atlanta litigation boutique of Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore. At BME, he was up against some of the most sophisticated firms in the city, working with partners who had particular expertise in racketeering, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud, and punitive damages, and working with attorneys who had clerked on appellate courts and litigated many appeals themselves.
It was at BME that Darren acquired a reputation for assisting plaintiffs' attorneys on appeals, as well as for litigating sophisticated tort cases, using the commercial litigation skills he acquired to expose fraud and other abuses that worked to the detriment of the plaintiffs he represented. After being co-counsel with plaintiff's lawyer Bill Bird for most of his seven years at BME, Darren left that firm to become Bill's partner in the Bird Law Group. There, Darren gained extensive additional experience in the litigation and trial of medical malpractice and other plaintiffs' tort actions.
This unusual combination of experience allows Darren to skillfully litigate plaintiffs' commercial cases, as well as medical malpractice and other plaintiffs' tort cases that have an additional element of fraud or other egregious conduct, and to litigate and argue appeals with the confidence of an experienced appellate attorney.
November 2002
U.S. Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit U.S. District Courts, Northern and Middle Districts of Georgia Georgia Supreme Court and Georgia Court of Appeals
Georgia State University College of Law, J.D. 2002 (summa cum laude)
Georgia State University Law Review: Member (2000-2001), Managing Editor (2001-2002)
Full-tuition Research Assistantship, Professor Victor Flatt (2000-2002)
Judicial Intern, The Honorable Hugh Thompson, Supreme Court of Georgia (2001-2002)
Emory University, B.A. 1991 (Philosophy/Biology)
Alben W. Barkley (debate) scholar, Evelyn B. White (academic) scholar
Twice recognized as one of top ten individual debaters in the nation (1990, 1991)
Champion Member, Georgia Trial Lawyers Association (2009-present)
Amicus Committee, Georgia Trial Lawyers Association (2008-present)
Member of American Bar Association, Georgia Bar Association, Atlanta Bar Association, and DeKalb County Bar Association
_Board of Directors, Atlanta Bar Association Council for Younger Lawyers (2007-2008)
?Highly Recommended? for
commercial litigation, medical malpractice/personal injury, and
trade secret disputes in Benchmark Litigation
Georgia ?Rising Star? Super
Lawyer (2006, 2007, 2010, 2011)
Frequent speaker on Appellate
Writing and Advocacy, Electronic Discovery, Evidence Preservation
and Spoliation, and Litigating
Complex Actions
Quoted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the William & Mary
Law Review, the Rutgers Law
Review, the New York University
Law Journal, the Georgia State University Law Review, and The
Pocket Part (Yale Law Journal)
Testified before the United States' Congressional Advisory Committee
on e-discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
