Notes from the Editor

• Pages: 4-5
• Date: 01 October 2025
• Published date: 01 October 2025
• Author: Christopher M. Burke
• Subject Matter: Derecho Público y Administrativo

Published in The Construction Lawyer Volume 44, Number 4, ©2025 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission.

All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in

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Forum on Construction Law The Construction Lawyer Fall 2025

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Christopher M. Burke

Christopher M. Burke is a senior partner at Varela, Lee, Metz & Guarino, LLP, in McLean, Virginia.

Welcome to the Fall 2025 issue of The Construction Lawyer! This issue features articles connected to three

of the plenary sessions from the Forum’s wildly successful 2025 Annual Meeting in Austin, TX, which was

entitled “Return of the Contractors—Transforming the Construction Landscape.” Each of the articles in this

issue is excellent and well worth your reading time.

I am writing this column from an undisclosed location overseas, where I will be spending the next week in

client meetings. But it got me to thinking about the good fortune I have had over much of my career to travel

to dozens of cities in the United States and multiple cities overseas for depositions, hearings, site visits, and

professional development. With Zoom and Teams meetings taking the place of what used to be more in-person

communication, those opportunities to travel may not be as frequent for everyone as they used to be; so for any

younger attorneys reading this, if/when you have the opportunity to travel for work, I encourage you to jump

at it. It’s good to get out of the office and “on the road” for work—and take a walk around the city you are in

either in the early morning or evening to get a feel for a place to which you may never(!) return.

I will even let you in on a Burke family life hack, one that has spared my wife Christine (also an attorney) and

me from god-knows-how-many lame airport souvenirs from countless cites—Starbucks mugs. For those not in

the know, Starbucks sells specific mugs for all 50 states and even for many individual cities in the United States.

Starbucks also sells these mugs across the world for nearly ever country and a plethora of international cities.

The mugs are unique to each city/state/county and feature designs centered around the specific location’s

offerings.

We have quite a collection of these mugs at the Burke home, and it’s nice to pick one up and recall the time I

was in Toronto for an arbitration hearing, a deposition I took in Denver, the Forum Meeting I attended in New

Orleans, or that time I fell asleep at the Las Vegas airport and missed a red-eye flight home. In short, it’s a nice

(and useful) collection of memories from places visited for both work and pleasure. And it assuredly beats an

unlikely-to-be-worn giftshop sweatshirt that says “Delaware.”

Turning to this issue of The Construction Lawyer, we feature three articles, The first article, “Construction

Management at Risk: Who Is Really at Risk?” by Chantal Fink Mehill and Christopher Payne, addresses

the unique legal considerations for a construction manager at-risk (CMAR) project delivery method. The

second article is “Understanding Sureties: Why Do They Do What They Do?,” by Douglass Wynne Jr. and

Ashley Robinson; this article provides a considered look at the role of sureties on construction projects, and

the often-complex legal relationships between sureties, their principals, and their obligees. This issue’s third

article is “Navigating Ethical Issues When Parties Change Mid-project,” by Samuel Gregory and Matthew Peng,

which covers the ethical challenges facing attorneys when players on a construction project change midstream

and which changes result in potential conflicts of interest for attorneys and their law firms. As always, our

contributing editors have Hard Hat Case Notes and Construction Bills columns for your reading pleasure.

Finally, this Fall 2025 issue includes the first Chair’s Column from the 2025–26 Forum Chair Tracy James.

I encourage you to read it because Tracy sets the course for what is sure to be a great Forum year—the

50th anniversary of the Forum! Tracy (and the Forum) has a lot of exciting ideas that will play out in the

NOTES FROM THE EDITORNotes from the Editor