John L. Watkins

John L. Watkins practiced law in Atlanta for over 35 years and was a partner at several national law firms, including McKenna Long & Aldridge (now Dentons), Barnes & Thornburg, and Thompson Hine. He retired from Thompson Hine in 2019 and moved to Athens, where he established a solo practice and represented businesses in their commercial matters. After retiring from private practice in 2022, Watkins became part-time, in-house counsel for a consulting company.

While practicing in Atlanta, Watkins was a commercial litigator and business attorney. A primary focus of his practice was insurance coverage. At Barnes & Thornburg and Thompson Hine, he represented policyholders in insurance coverage and bad faith claims and litigation. Watkins had extensive prior experience representing insurance companies in multimillion-dollar coverage and bad faith disputes. He also defended many types of underlying claims that lead to coverage disputes, such as construction claims, catastrophic tort claims and environmental claims.

Watkins has been rated “AV” by Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory for many years and has been named to the list of Georgia Super Lawyers since 2008. He has written extensively on insurance coverage and other legal issues, including authoring the chapter on insurance law in Georgia Business Litigation 2020.

Watkins teaches Insurance Law at the School of Law, where he shares both theoretical and practical approaches to insurance coverage law based on his experience in representing both insurers and insureds in coverage disputes.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from Mercer University and his law degree summa cum laude from UGA, where he was a member of the Georgia Law Review editorial board and was inducted into the Order of the Coif.