From in-house to in court: Ex-Home Depot attorney joins King & Spalding

For many senior lawyers, the idea of leaving a top in-house position at a Fortune 100 company after two decades may seem absurd. Will Barnette is different.

The 56-year-old litigator has just hung up his orange apron as the Home Depot’s associate general counsel to rejoin Atlanta law firm King & Spalding, where he spent several years early in his career.

Litigator Will Barnette is settling into a new role at King & Spalding, where he can build on his expertise in class actions and commercial disputes. (Abbey Cutrer/AJC)

Barnette told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he loved his 21 years at Home Depot, which included successfully defending the Georgia company against more than 250 different class action lawsuits.

But Barnette said a great employer and colleagues still left him wanting more.

“It just got to the point where I wanted to go back to practicing law actually hands-on — litigation in court — as opposed to managing outside counsel, which is more of what you do in-house,” he said. “For the last decade of my career, I really want to be back actually litigating the cases.”

At King & Spalding, a global operator with more than $2.3 billion in revenue last year, Barnette’s expertise is now available to a range of clients. Since 2023, the firm’s lawyers have been involved in more than 85 trials, a spokesperson told the AJC.

Jessica Corley, who co-leads the firm’s business litigation practice group, said Barnette is an asset, in part because he can answer the question, “Why King & Spalding?” from an in-house perspective. She said litigation is a cornerstone of the 140-year-old firm and continues to be a major engine for its growth.

Barnette is one of about 850 litigators King & Spalding has worldwide and one of 39 litigation partners hired by the firm in the past two years.

“Will’s arrival allows us to focus on and grow the amount of work we are doing for clients on complex matters, including consumer class actions, product cases, internal investigations, government investigations and plaintiff recovery opportunities,” Corley said.

For Home Depot, which reported almost $160 billion in sales in fiscal 2024, Barnette’s departure at the end of November was a significant loss.

“King & Spalding has gained an exceptionally talented lawyer, strong leader and trusted counsel to senior-level executives and partners,” said Teresa Roseborough, Home Depot’s executive vice president and general counsel. “Will played a key role in strengthening our litigation strategy and supporting our teams across the business.”

Will Barnette successfully defended Home Depot against more than 250 class action lawsuits. (Abbey Cutrer/AJC)

Barnette, who moved to Atlanta 25 years ago to join King & Spalding as an associate, is now in his second week as a partner at the firm. He said he’d like to help mentor young attorneys while continuing to work on complex business litigation, including cases associated with the so-called “forever chemicals” widely used in a range of products.

A Tennessean, Barnette went to law school in New Orleans, where he clerked for a state appellate judge before spending three years as an associate at the law firm Jones Walker.

He said he was headhunted by King & Spalding in early 2000 but left the firm and Atlanta in late 2002 to go in-house with one of its clients, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., in Kentucky. The tobacco company ended with a merger two years later and Barnette returned to Atlanta for the Home Depot job in 2004.

Initially, he handled class actions for the retail giant. Barnette worked his way up to managing its commercial litigation team, which comprises about a quarter of the company’s legal department. He spent the past decade in that role, predominantly coaching outside lawyers hired to appear in courts across the country on Home Depot’s behalf.