Lightfoot Adds Four Attorneys
Four first-year associates join the firm
September 16, 2024
Lightfoot, Franklin & White LLC is pleased to welcome four new talented attorneys to the firm. Samuel J. Katulich, Cassidy Keith, Caroline Leak and Colin J. Matthaei join as first-year associates based in the firm’s Birmingham office.
“We are delighted to have the newest generation of Lightfoot attorneys on board,” said managing partner Melody H. Eagan. “These excellent attorneys are former Lightfoot summer associates, and it’s a pleasure to welcome them back. They all have exemplary work ethic and skill, and we are confident in the value they’ll add to the firm and our clients.”
Katulich is a former 2023 Lightfoot summer associate. He graduated with honors from George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, where he served as managing editor of the George Mason Law Review and as a first-year competition chair for the American Bar Association’s National Moot Court Competition. Katulich is also a future 2025-2026 clerk for the U.S. District Judge Corey L. Maze in the Northern District of Alabama.
Keith was a Lightfoot summer associate in 2020 and 2021. She also spent two summers with an Am Law 200 firm and interned with a North Carolina real estate and estate planning boutique. Keith clerked for both the Hon. Edward Carnes, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and the Hon. Annemarie Carney Axon of the Northern District of Alabama. Keith earned her J.D. from the University of Alabama School of Law and was the articles editor for the Alabama Law Review and a quarterfinalist in the Alabama Law Moot Court Competition.
Leak is a former two-time Lightfoot summer associate in the 2022 and 2023 classes. She also previously clerked at a Birmingham-based full-service law firm and externed for U.S. District Judge Kelly Fitzgerald Pate of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. Leak earned her J.D. from Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, where she was the online managing editor and junior editor for the Cumberland Law Review and the vice president of the Cumberland Student Bar Association.
Matthaei was a 2023 summer associate and a former judicial intern for U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler in the Northern District of Alabama. He has completed summer associateships at two Am Law 200 firms and a white-collar defense and litigation boutique. Matthaei obtained his J.D. from the Washington and Lee University School of Law, where he was lead articles editor for the German Law Journal and coached the Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Team.
