Speaker Biographies

Our Distinguished Speakers for Super CLE 2019

The CLEs will be held at the Hilton Head Country Club, Hilton Head Plantation, 70 Skull Creek Drive, Hilton Head Island, SC. Please allow a few extra minutes for the security gate pass. Please tell security you are going to the country club for the Hilton Head Bar meeting.

Desa Ballard, Esquire

Desa Ballard began her private practice in 1997 after 10 years with a national law firm and 4 years with the South Carolina Judicial Department. She is the senior attorney at Ballard & Watson, Attorneys at Law. Her firm focuses its practices on ethics, professional responsibility, appellate court litigation, and civil litigation. She is licensed to practice law in South Carolina and the District of Columbia. She is a certified mediator for circuit and probate court proceedings.

Stephen Spitz, Esquire

Stephen Spitz has taught property, real estate transactions, environmental law and equity, for a long time at two different law schools in this State, USC Law School and CSOL.

Currently, he is of counsel to a law firm with a number of offices in the Northeast, including Pa., NY, Del, N.J. The firm has about 200 lawyers and is named Stevens & Lee. In S.C., Stevens & Lee has a single office, in Charleston, and at the moment we have two lawyers in that office, Mr. Spitz and Ryan Neville.

As for special distinctions – he is not real sure that there are any, but upon information and belief, they say that he is a co-author of a Bar Publication called Real Estate Transactions: Cases and Materials (2d ed. S.C.Bar) (He claims that it the very worst book on this subject (as to his knowledge) no one else has ever elected to write a book on this highly entertaining topic. It is further said, again merely upon information and belief, that he is a so-called “Admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska” (a truly landlocked state) and this permits him to be in charge of various goldfish and tadpoles in that state, as the Governor of that State may so direct.

Barbara Seymour, Esquire

Barbara M. Seymour of the law firm of Clawson & Staubes, LLC, represents lawyers, law firms, and judges in a variety of matters related to ethics and professional discipline. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Management and Marketing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1990 and her Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1993.

Barbara worked for the Office of Disciplinary Counsel to the Supreme Court of South Carolina for seventeen years, investigating and prosecuting allegations of misconduct, incapacity, and contempt of court by lawyers. She served as the Deputy Disciplinary Counsel from 2007 until 2017. Before joining ODC, Barbara worked as a trial lawyer at Harris & Graves in the upstate.

Barbara is a member of the South Carolina Bar, the Georgia Bar, the South Carolina Women Lawyers Association, and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers. She currently serves in the House of Delegates and on the Law Related Education, Unauthorized Practice of Law, Future of the Profession, and Diversity Committees at the South Carolina Bar.

In 2006, Barbara was named the Law Related Education Lawyer of the Year. She was a 2006 and 2011 Fellow of the National Institute for the Teaching of Ethics and Professionalism. Barbara was an adjunct instructor in the Professional Legal Assistants Program at Converse College and currently teaches in the Paralegal Degree Program at Midlands Technical College. Her courses have included Ethics, Civil Litigation, Business Law, Torts, Legal Research and Writing, and Law Office Management.

Thank you to all of our distinguished faculty for their time and efforts to educate our members.

CLEs are free to all members of the Hilton Head Bar Association. To join the Hilton Head Bar, please mail $100.00 to the attention of treasurer Tyler Melnick at Finger, Melnick & Brooks, 35 Hospital Center Commons, Suite 200, Hilton Head Island, SC 29926.

To reserve your spot in our CLES, or if you are interested in speaking to our membership, please contact Margaret S. Day, Programs Director, at Law Office of Margaret S. Day, LLC, P.O. Box 763, Bluffton, SC 29910 or (843) 836-3714.

Harry Goldberg, Esquire

Harry L. Goldberg has engaged in the practice of law since receiving his Juris Doctor degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1973. His practice primarily involves mediation, arbitration and litigation in medical malpractice, personal injury and business cases. Additionally, Mr. Goldberg is certified as a Circuit Court Civil Mediator and Arbitrator by the Circuit Courts for South Carolina and the United States District Court for South Carolina.

He has presented numerous seminars on Alternative Dispute Resolution and has lectured at various continuing legal education programs sponsored by the South Carolina Bar. Mr. Goldberg is a past chairman of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section of the South Carolina Bar. He has appeared on television discussing the benefit of mediation in South Carolina. He is a member of the Resolution of Fee Disputes Board and the House of Delegates of the South Carolina Bar.

Mr. Goldberg is also a member of the District of Columbia Bar. Mr. Goldberg has an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell and has been selected for inclusion in the Best Lawyers in America in the practice areas of mediation and arbitration every year since 2012. He was named Mediator of the Year in South Carolina for 2012 by Best Lawyers in America.

Kathleen Chewning Barnes

Kathleen C. Barnes is a solo practitioner at Barnes Law Firm, LLC, in Hampton, SC, where she focuses on state and federal appellate practice, as well as state and federal motions practice and trial consulting.

She received a B.A. degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her J.D. degree from the Charleston School of Law. Kathleen was a member of The Charleston Law Review and received the 2010 Arthur Gasque Howe Trial Advocacy Award. She is admitted to practice in South Carolina and Georgia state courts, as well as the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

She served as law clerk to the Honorable John Cannon Few, Chief Judge for the South Carolina Court of Appeals (now South Carolina Supreme Court Justice), from 2010 to 2012. Kathleen is a member of the Rotary Club of Hampton County and lives in Hampton with her husband, William Barnes, an attorney with Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick, and her daughter.