Mr. Burkholder heads the LeClairRyan Detroit office and has over 30 years of trial experience in business litigation, wrongful death actions, catastrophic injury cases, design defect cases, and product recall actions. He has represented architects, engineers and accountants in professional liability actions and has defended insurers in first party policy (fire, all risk property or business interruption) cases, as well as bad faith and excess liability claims. He has worked on complicated construction projects, representing design-build firms. He has defended pharmaceutical companies in medical device cases, ethical drug litigation and in generic drug registration litigation. His toxic tort experience includes the representation of manufacturers and distributors in lung cancer, liver cancer (nickel products), asbestosis, silicosis and mold cases. He has tried complicated UCC cases involving requirements contracts and just-in-time inventory systems. His practice has included the representation of domestic and foreign firearm’s manufacturers. His background includes experience in the U. S. Marine Corps as a trial counsel and military judge, work as a police commissioner and training as an armorer.

In addition to direct trial representation, Mr. Burkholder has coordinated the defense of multi-state product liability actions, supervising local counsel, coordinating discovery and managing the operations of large document depositories.

Mr. Burkholder's practice involves the extensive use of computers to manage litigation and to prepare demonstrative evidence. He has supervised the use of document management programs in environmental declaratory judgment actions and the preparation of computer animations in product liability actions. He has also developed a computer based litigation and case management system that permits corporate clients to budget and track litigation expenses. Mr. Burkholder has been a frequent lecturer on demonstrative evidence and trial technique.