Biography

Throughout his 28+ year career, Mr. Battleson has worked in deal teams as an attorney, investment banker and principal involved in operating businesses, development projects, and existing assets with a value in excess of $2.2 billion; and, as a commercial litigation attorney representing small and medium size businesses, as well as defending national insurance companies, multinational self-insured companies, and the State of Georgia in matters with potential liability in excess of $100 million.
Mark graduated from Emory University School of Law in 1995, while also working for the United States Attorney’s Office as a third-year practice clerk. Following law school, Mark clerked for the Chief Judge of the Georgia Court of Appeals, and then began his litigation career working as a commercial litigator representing individuals and businesses, and as an insurance defense attorney, defending against plaintiffs and claimants in personal injury and workers’ compensation lawsuits and claims. During his initial trial practice, Mark prosecuted and defended hundreds of depositions of fact witnesses and medical experts, successfully defended dozens of trials, and negotiated hundreds of favorable settlements.

Mark returned to graduate school after several years of law practice and earned his MBA from University of Michigan Ross School of Business. After business school, Mark worked in New York City for a bulge-bracket investment bank, in its Institutional Securities, Equity Division, and developed a strategy involving the analysis of derivatives (options / futures) of stocks and bonds, and their reaction to enterprise-level litigation and other significant legal and regulatory matters. After returning to Atlanta, Mark returned to the formal practice of law representing developers and capital providers as an attorney with a large Atlanta firm, forming entities and partnerships, structuring and closing tax-credit-based equity financings and conventional debt, and handling general commercial real estate sales and financings involving retail, office, multifamily, hospitality, and land.

Prior to founding Battleson Law, LLC, Mark continued to develop his legal and financial expertise with a number of local and national investment and asset management firms, with stops in San Diego and Miami, before returning to Atlanta. While in-house, Mark served in senior and executive, legal-focused, development, asset management, and capital markets roles, primarily involving market-rent multifamily, tax-credit multifamily, condominium, RV and MHC parks, and single-family housing. Mark has also served as: capital markets director with the country’s largest multifamily developer, where he was responsible for the legal-heavy investment and financing activities of the company’s East Coast operations; executive of a boutique real estate investment and merchant bank in Miami, where he was responsible for managing investment and financing processes, including negotiation of all business terms in legal documentation involving debt and equity transactions for condominium and apartment developments and land; and, as a development manager of a real estate investment firm in San Diego focused on institutional debt and equity investments in residential and retail developments.

In providing alternative/consultative services, Mr. Battleson has also: wound-down and sold the hard and intellectual property assets of a manufacturing firm in Georgia; acted as counsel and eCommerce manager with a B2B Internet startup in San Francisco during the dotcom boom; acted as an expert witness providing damages opinions; and, was a member of a small, University of Michigan venture capital fund, placing investments along-side larger firms.

Whether in law firms or investment / asset management firms, Mark has continued to hone his legal skills through the real world negotiation and execution of corporate, transactional, and business contract matters, as well as providing select legal services involving commercial matters, serious injury, workers’ compensation, and car accidents in Atlanta. Battleson Law was founded after Mark continued to see and hear business colleagues discuss nuanced “errors” in structures or transactions which were the result of attorneys without financial modeling skill / industry experience being the final preparers of documentation. Mark has been on the business side for much of his career, including responsibility for financial modeling / structuring, and he has first-hand experience of “living with” the documents after the closing. In addition to his business disputes practice, Mark continues to represent FLSA overtime wage claimants and seriously injured individuals, as he finds it gratifying to provide a superior, business-like level of service and knowledge to honorable and deserving people who are up against large companies or other liable parties.