Burton Kinerk

A native son of Tucson, Burton J. Kinerk has spent most of his life in the Tucson community. He graduated from Tucson High School and attended the University of Arizona on a baseball scholarship, earning a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 1957. He then served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper-intelligence officer for the 18th Airborne Corps before returning to earn his J.D. from the University of Arizona Law School in 1962. Kinerk is nationally certified by the American Bar Association as a Specialist in Civil Trial Law and Civil Practice Advocacy. He has more than 50 years of civil trial experience at the local, state, and federal level, with a focus on serious personal injury, wrongful death, medical malpractice, aviation crash claims, and complex multi-party plaintiff litigation including flood and product liability cases. He is a former private pilot. For more than 35 years Kinerk has also worked as a registered sports agent, advising and negotiating contracts for professional athletes and coaches with Southern Arizona ties, including Lute Olson, Sean Elliott, Chuck Cecil, Tedy Bruschi, Michael Bates, Mario Bates, Byron Evans, Joe Salave'a, Chris McAlister, Larry Smith, Mike Candrea, Ricky Barnes, Dan Forsman, and Crissy Ahmann Perham. He holds an AV Preeminent Rating from Martindale-Hubbell since 1980 and has been named to Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers Magazine's Southwest Super Lawyers, and America's Top 100 Lawyers Lifetime Achievement Award. He was co-founder of Arizona's Finest Lawyers Foundation and has served as president of both the Tucson Chapter of ABOTA and the Arizona Trial Lawyers Association (now AzAJ). Kinerk has also guest lectured at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers School of Law, the Arizona State Bar, the Western Trial Lawyers Association, and Pima County Bar.