David Zalesne, Owen Steel Company

David Zalesne, who joined the Firm in 1997 as a partner in the Litigation Department, left us in 2004 to become the President of Owen Steel Company, a privately-owned structural steel fabricator and contractor based in Columbia, South Carolina. Owen Steel has plants in Columbia and Wilmington, Delaware, and an office in New York City. Fun Fact: Owen Steel has done some big local projects, including for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Live! Casino and Hotel as well as at the World Trade Center site.

David has served on the Board of the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) since 2006. He was Board Chair from 2017-2019 and currently is a member of the AISC Executive Committee and Chair of the AISC Education Foundation. Fun Fact: As part of his work for AISC, David has testified before Congress and federal agencies and authored position papers on infrastructure policy. David says he can’t believe it’s been nineteen years since he left the Firm and that he’s now been in the steel business longer than he practiced law. David notes that the practice of law is a great background for what he does now and that he still feels as if he is practicing law because he is involved in such a wide range of areas, from contracts to employment to environmental issues. Although Owen Steel is in construction, it is very involved in what is going on in the commercial real estate markets and has done construction work for the Firm’s real estate clients. Work at Owen Steel is somewhat a family affair as David’s wife, Anny, who still has a part-time dental practice, also works at Owen Steel, and their son, Alex, works in Owen Steel’s New York office. Their oldest son, Michael, who now lives in Washington, D.C., recently got married in Florida and Steve Cutler and Klehr alum Jerry Novick were there to help celebrate the happy event. Their youngest son, Aaron, who was 3 when David left the Firm to join Owen Steel, will graduate from NYU this Spring and is thinking about law school. David travels to the Wilmington plant about once a quarter and makes other business trips, managing to combine them with Eagles games, including the recent Super Bowl. By now, he’s seen more Eagles games outside Philadelphia than in and is not the only Birds fan when he does. “Philadelphia fans travel well.” The benefit of living in South Carolina is being outside all year playing golf and tennis. David notes he does not play golf and tennis as well as he’d like, but that he plays better than if he still ”had to bill 30,000 hours a year.” Owen Steel does not use a lot of outside counsel, but David is amazed by how many familiar faces he sees when he looks at the Firm’s website. There is “a lot of continuity” at the Firm. People he worked with in his years with the Firm are still here, “still successful, doing well and busy.”

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