David D. Burns

David Burns serves as chair of Lerman Senter's Media practice group. He brings more than 30 years of experience representing media and communications companies. While his experience and practice cover the full range of communications and media industry issues, his primary focus is on regulatory and transactional matters facing the media and broadcast industries, including representation of clients before the Federal Communications Commission and other federal agencies.

David acts as regulatory and deal counsel on transactional matters such as mergers, acquisitions and financings, and regularly counsels clients on compliance with regulatory requirements affecting programming content, political advertising, ownership issues, station licensing and operations, and spectrum management. He recently created a structure which enabled a debtor client to minimize regulatory delays associated with implementation of a pre-packaged bankruptcy plan, allowing the client to emerge from bankruptcy much sooner than would otherwise be the case.

David has represented clients in small deals and in multi-billion dollar transactions, and his clients appreciate his pragmatic and business-oriented approach. Clients value him as “super responsive and very smart, a very good writer, and very easy to work with. He has gotten good results for us.” Another client particularly appreciates that “he understands my business, my tolerances and my objectives.”

Prior to joining Lerman Senter, David practiced with a large international law firm in Washington, DC. He speaks at seminars and conferences and writes on a variety of media and communications industry issues.