Jai W. Keep-Barnes

Jai W. Keep-Barnes is an associate in the firm’s litigation department. His areas of practice include construction, real estate, land use, and complex commercial litigation. Mr. Keep-Barnes graduated cum laude from the William S. Richardson School of Law where he received several CALI Excellence for the Future Awards.

At Richardson, Mr. Keep-Barnes served as the Teaching Assistant in Richardson’s Academic Success Program for the first-year Torts class and worked as a summer law-clerk at a small-sized firm in Honolulu. Additionally, Mr. Keep-Barnes was a two-time oralist on Richardson’s Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Team that achieved the first-place memorial submission in the 2016 US Pacific Regional Jessup Competition. He was also named second-best oralist in the same competition. During his third-year at Richardson, he was recruited as an oralist for the International Environmental Moot Court Team, and earned recognition as a top-ten oralist at the Stetson International Environmental Moot Court Competition. As a result of the foregoing, Mr. Keep-Barnes received the John S. Edmunds Award for Civility and Vigorous Advocacy.

During law school, Mr. Keep-Barnes’s Second-Year Seminar paper, Inclusionary Zoning as a Taking: A Critical Look at its Ability to Provide Affordable Housing, was awarded first place in the 33rd Annual Smith-Babcock-Williams Student Writing Competition and was published in the national law journal The Urban Lawyer. Upon graduating from Richardson, Mr. Keep-Barnes was appointed by Dean Soifer to serve on the Board of the William S. Richardson School of Law Alumni Association.