Michael E. Barnicle
Michael E. Barnicle

At 800 feet and 130 miles per hour, all you see are the trees whipping by.

Michael E. Barnicle was the second man on the airplane, which meant he was near the door. When it opened, Barnicle peered out at the sight — green tree tops outlined against the sky by the just-rising sun.

Not a bad view for a man on his first jump.

“One minute!” the jump master shouted.

Barnicle’s mind was focused and clear. Most skydivers jump at 13,000 to 15,000 feet, and in the light of day. There is time and visibility to admire the view. And with a professional jumper strapped to your back and tasked with pulling the rip cord, all a first-timer has to do is enjoy the ride.

Barnicle’s responsibility was greater. He would jump his own jump, rip his own cord. A lieutenant in the Army JAG Corps, he had trained for this moment for two weeks. It was too late to worry. He had to trust his instructions.

He stared at the small red light above the jump door. Soon, he and upward of 60 others would jump out of the plane in preparation for doing the same in Iraq. For now, they were in a C-130 plane at jump school in Fort Benning, Ga., about 110 miles south of Atlanta on the Georgia-Alabama border.

“Get ready!” the jump master shouted.

Barnicle — a trial lawyer who joined Duane, Morris LLP this month — stared at that light.

Red. Red. Red.

The green of the trees.

His mind clear as he prepared to jump out of the bird, as they call it.

Red. Red. Red. Red.

Green.

“Go!” the jump master shouted, inches from Barnicle’s face. “Go! Go! Go!”

Barnicle didn’t hear those subsequent shouts. He was in the air, shaking off what’s known as the prop blast, which is the force of air that greets all paratroopers. He likened it to a football drill where a player runs through a gantlet of teammates who hammer him with pads as he charges through.

He pulled his cord. His chute deployed — a reassuring jerk on his body that whipped him upward and straightened him out.

“Good,” he thought. “I’m not going to plummet to the earth and die.”

His ease was short-lived.

The man jumping behind him got pushed by a gust of wind and landed on Barnicle, his body pressing down on Barnicle’s chute, decreasing its air supply. Barnicle could already hear the men on the ground screaming up at the jumpers through megaphones.

He noted the direction he was traveling and maneuvered his parachute the opposite direction so that his chute could catch the air. He put his hand on his reserve rip cord grip just in case they got tangled.

He was falling toward the earth with a man on his back. Nothing to do but work to get free.

A clinic for vets

Barnicle’s interest in the law came from his problem-solving nature and the encouragement he received from counselors at the University of Kansas who suggested that his political science degree and interest in government rules and regulations might make law school a good fit.

His interest in international law — he’ll be handling government contract litigation and construction — came later.

During his second year at The John Marshall Law School, Barnicle read a report by the American Bar Association saying that American veterans were having trouble getting their benefits.

“That didn’t make sense to me,” Barnicle said.

In response, Barnicle and two friends approached John Marshall’s Brian E. Clauss about creating a clinic to provide legal support to veterans.

The Veterans Legal Support Center & Clinic was born.

Open since 2007, the clinic now fields 1,000 calls per year and handles 400 V.A. benefit appeals.

“Students don’t drive curriculum at schools generally, and three guys did,” Clauss said. “They worked the dean. They worked the board of trustees. … That’s an inspirational model for current and future students.”

Barnicle wasn’t done. Throughout the yearlong process of launching the clinic, he and his co-founders met with countless veterans to hear their stories.

“If I’m going to talk the talk, I’m going to walk the walk and serve my country,” he decided. “The JAG Corps was a fantastic opportunity for me to both serve and practice law.”

Soldier first, lawyer second

Barnicle spent all of 2011 in Iraq.

As part of the contracts and fiscal law team, he advised commanding officers on how they could legally allocate budgetary funds and then negotiated and wrote the contracts resulting in those decisions.

Like all members of the Army, though, JAG officers are considered soldiers first and lawyers second.

Barnicle gained the respect of his co-workers in both arenas.

“He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty and get out there and do some tough work,” said Lt. Col. Brian Chapuran, who was the chief of contract and fiscal law for the offices of the staff judge advocate when Barnicle came to Iraq.

In the 18th Airborne Corps, getting your hands dirty means waking at dawn, throwing a 40-pound pack on your back and making a 12-mile run across Fort Bragg in North Carolina. It means holding yourself to a high physical standard, lawyer or not.

“Going to airborne school as a JAG attorney makes you the scariest thing in the world,” Capt. Brett Cramer said. “A lawyer who falls from the sky.”

Capt. Phil Dickerson recalls an early morning run up a hill with the “hard charging” Barnicle on his heels, yelling at him to run the hill faster.

“He definitely fully embraced the soldier side of being in the Army JAG Corps,” Dickerson said.

That was Chapuran’s impression, too.

“He wasn’t somebody who sat back and said, ‘I’m above that. It’s not something I’m supposed to be doing,’” Chapuran said. “I think he had respect of everybody in the unit from soldiers up to the senior leaders.”

And while the enlisted men respected Barnicle’s soldiering, his fellow attorneys respected his legal mind. That included Cramer, who advised commanders on the legal parameters of their operations.

“I knew every time they’d come up with one of those contract or fiscal law issues, I could find Mike Barnicle and get that answered in minutes,” Cramer said. “And it was always going to be correct. And it made me look good.”

From Iraq to Duane, Morris

Falling from the plane in 2010, Barnicle and the man pressed against his chute were able to use their training to extricate themselves from each other in the air.

Soon after, Barnicle was on the ground, the chute dragging him across the ground before he popped himself loose from his harness.

Laying in the jump zone, the world was “quiet and peaceful,” Barnicle said.

“You see this beautiful sight of parachuters floating down to the earth and C-130s flying away,” he said. “That was the coolest thing for me.”

An appreciation of the military and the importance of service helped draw Barnicle to Duane, Morris — and the firm to him.

“Mike, who is a young guy, is a real go-getter and has absolutely maximized his experience in the service,” said Daniel E. Toomey, a partner in the construction and government contract litigation group working out of the firm’s Washington, D.C., office.

Toomey was impressed by Barnicle’s “cutting-edge knowledge” of government contracts, his ability to attract business with his substantive knowledge and “winning way” as well as the fact that when it comes to soldiers, “he’s walked in their shoes.”

“Like it or not, the United States is not going to be pulling back, and there will be other places where we will be intervening,” Toomey said. “We are very happy to have someone who not only knows the process when dealing with federal agencies but who has the credentials.”

Barnicle, 32, brings a military work ethic to Duane, Morris. He knows the job may take him outside his comfort zone.

And that’s just fine with him.

“When failure is not an option, (work) is easy. You just gotta get it done,” he said.

“When my partner gives me something that isn’t necessarily in my wheelhouse, I don’t care. … It’s not like ‘Oh, this is an insurance claim. It’s not what I do.’

“It’s, ‘I’ll get it done.’”