Mobile has a new top lawyer. Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis has named Robert Shreve, a partner at the Birmingham-founded law firm Burr Forman, as the city’s new legal counsel, according to a city statement.
Shreve replaces Ricardo Woods, who served as city attorney for more than a decade under former Mayor Sandy Stimpson and guided the city’s legal office through a period of sweeping growth, major infrastructure litigation and the city’s largest public works projects in a generation. Woods is not leaving City Hall: he will remain on Cheriogotis’ leadership team, shifting his focus to policy and economic development.
“Ricardo Woods has served the City of Mobile with integrity and distinction for more than 12 years, and I’m grateful for his continued commitment to the city,” Cheriogotis said in a statement. “His deep knowledge of our legal and governmental landscape will remain invaluable to my administration.”
Of his new city attorney, the mayor said: “Robert Shreve is extraordinarily capable and deeply respected. He brings the experience, temperament, and leadership needed to guide the City Attorney’s Office into its next chapter.”
A familiar face at council meetings
Shreve is already a known quantity inside Government Plaza. He has been a partner at Burr Forman since 2020, where his practice has centered on governmental and municipal law — the field the city attorney’s office lives in daily. He worked alongside Woods while Woods served as city attorney, and since Cheriogotis took office in November he has frequently stood beside the new mayor during City Council meetings, advising on procedural and legal questions as they came up.
Burr Forman, founded in Birmingham more than a century ago, has long been one of the Southeast’s most active firms in municipal representation, and its Mobile office has advised public bodies across the region. That background matters: the city attorney’s office advises the mayor, the seven-member City Council and every city department, drafts and reviews ordinances and contracts, and represents the city in litigation ranging from routine claims to headline-making disputes over infrastructure funding and development deals.
A transition with continuity
The arrangement keeps experience in the building while putting a new lawyer at the head of the office. Woods’ move to a policy and economic development role pairs the city’s longest-tenured legal voice in recent memory with the administration’s push to land new investment — a portfolio that has included everything from the new downtown airport terminal effort to industrial recruitment along the port.
For Shreve, the job begins as the city works through a packed agenda: a new administration’s first budget priorities, a rewrite of the city’s development rules, and the continuing legal questions that come with one of the South’s fastest-changing waterfront cities.
City officials did not announce an exact start date for the transition, and the City Attorney’s Office did not respond to questions about pending matters. The appointment does not require City Council confirmation, though Shreve will appear before the council regularly in his advisory role.