In Memoriam: Marvin Barkin

Longtime Tampa attorney Marvin Barkin is the rare person who laid claim to two “best of” titles: He was both the smartest and the funniest person in the room.

“His intellect was the stuff of legends,” says fellow attorney Hal Mullis. Barkin and Mullis founded what's now Trenam Law, an 80-attorney firm with offices in St. Petersburg and Tampa, in 1970. At home and away from the office, meanwhile, Barkin lived for making his three kids laugh, through a joke or well-timed story. “He had a refined sense of humor,” adds Mullis, who met Barkin in 1968.

Barkin died peacefully at home Feb. 7. He was 84 years old. Barkin, says Mullis, had Parkinson's disease for nearly a decade.

Barkin was more than smart and funny, say his former colleagues. “What really set Marvin apart was his judgment and his temperament, plus his sense of humanity,” says Mullis. “He was unflappable. And always composed.”

He was also a renowned litigator, an attorney whose peers called him a lawyer's lawyer. The Best Lawyers in America publication named Barkin Lawyer of the Year three times, including twice for Banking and Finance Litigation and once for Bet-the-Company Litigation. The Hillsborough County Bar Association named Barkin lawyer of the year in 1998. Barkin also devoted a significant amount of time to the legal profession in local, state and national levels, chairing multiple boards and committees.

A Winter Haven native, Barkin grew up reading books in the back of his family's dry goods store, where he dreamed of becoming a lawyer, according to his obituary. He graduated from Emory University and then Harvard Law School. He returned to Florida after law school, and according to a statement from the firm, earned the highest score on the bar exam in the state. Barkin then served a one-year clerkship in Miami, where he met and married his wife of 58 years, Gertrude (Trudy) Parnes Barkin. The couple moved to Tampa in 1959, and Barkin joined one of the region's top firms, Fowler, White.

Barkin was quickly named a partner at Fowler, White, but he also quickly exited the firm: by 1970, Barkin and nine others, including Mullis, left to form what's now Trenam Law. Barkin led the firm for decades, and remained active into his 80s.

Barkin had few non-work passions outside his family, friends, but the ones he had, he was devoted to. He was “an engaging storyteller, a generous mentor, a passionate (and perpetually disappointed) Tigers fan, a lifelong Democrat and a terrible golfer always willing to keep Trudy (a much better golfer) company on the links,” his obituary states. Barkin is survived by his wife, three children and six grandchildren.

While they both had different legal disciplines, Mullis, in growing the law firm alongside Barkin and others, says he admired his friend's grace under pressure. “Some people would see something as a crisis,” says Mullis, “but Marvin would summarize a situation for what it was and say, 'there's a solution, so let's go find it.'”