ANDREW KIRK SUSONG

Mr. Susong has almost 30 years experience as a corporate counsel, civil litigator, criminal defense attorney and mediator.

• For the last decade Mr. Susong served as general counsel to a family-owned industrial services business. He has supervised litigation and advised on all aspects of the business, including mergers and acquisitions, real estate transactions, customer and vendor agreements, and employment matters, including executive compensation.

• Previously Mr. Susong spent more than a decade as a civil litigator in Atlanta, specializing in trust, estate and probate litigation. He represented numerous trustees and beneficiaries in lawsuits regarding the interpretation and administration of trusts and estates valued in the tens of millions. For several years he represented the sole beneficiary of a $750 million trust in multiple disputes with adverse family members.

• Before returning to Atlanta, Mr. Susong spent several years as a white-collar criminal defense attorney in New York City. Notable clients included: a Fortune 10 C.E.O. accused of federal tax fraud; the founder of a major national technology company accused of securities fraud; an investment banker who testified before the U.S. Senate in the criminal investigation of a nationwide tax shelter strategy; and a prominent Manhattan art gallery prosecuted for state sales tax fraud.

• Mr. Susong has extensive experience in mediation, both as an advocate and as a neutral. He is registered with the Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Dispute Resolution in both general civil mediation and probate mediation. He often recommends mediation as an effective means of reducing the costs of litigation, while also giving parties more control over the resolution of their cases.

• Mr. Susong chaired the unsecured creditors committee in a $40 million bankruptcy estate arising from a qualified intermediary's use of client funds to invest in auction-rate municipal bonds underwritten by Lehman Brothers prior to its own bankruptcy.

• In pro bono work Mr. Susong represented indigent clients at the Bowery Mission in New York, and created and chairs a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity which supports a Christian seminary in the Scottish Highlands.

Mr. Susong was raised on a farm in Rockdale County, Georgia.  He received his bachelor’s degree (in philosophy) from Washington & Lee University and his law degree from the University of Virginia, where he was an editor of the Virginia Tax Review.

On a personal note, Mr. Susong is married to the former Kate MacKenzie; they have two children, Jack and India.  He is a member of ChristChurch Presbyterian, and his hobbies include skiing, film, travel and college football.  He has a special interest in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and several years ago he took a sabbatical to earn a master's degree in philosophy and theology from the University of Chicago.  His work included papers on Kripke's analysis of Wittgenstein's rule-following paradox (available to the curious here) as well as the implications of Wittgenstein's thought for Calvin's theology of justification (linked here). 

Mr. Susong is an active member of the New York and Georgia Bars, and an inactive member of the North Carolina Bar.  He accepts new clients by referral only, but if you are seeking a mediator please contact him via the link below.