His rural childhood home was a modest cement block two bedroom, but full of love. His dad and uncle, WWII combat veterans, built it on weekends one pickup truck load of materials per payday. The house included an indoor toilet and a black and white TV by the time Ken started school. As educators his parents tried hard to expose him to academic and cultural opportunities. (Dad was principal of a 12 grade country school and mom was a teacher.) And yes, car buffs, that is a ’53 Studebaker.
​
Now this “country boy come to town” is running for a rare open seat on the Georgia Court of Appeals.

By the time he entered high school, the Shigley family moved to the bigger town of Douglasville. At Douglas County High School, he was student body president, and selected for Governor’s Honors Program and as one of two high school seniors from Georgia chosen for the U.S. Senate Youth Program.
​
After graduating from Furman University and Emory University Law School, Ken Shigley went back home to take a job as an Assistant District Attorney. He prosecuted cases of murder, armed robbery, rape, child molestation, arson, burglary, drug dealing, embezzlement, and more. During that time, he was chosen as the “Outstanding Young Man” in Douglas County. After leaving the District Attorney’s office he worked in small town general law practice until he was recruited to join an Atlanta law firm.

As a young lawyer Ken Shigley worked his way up from associate to name partner in an Atlanta law firm where he defended civil suits for insurance companies and state and local governments in courts all over Georgia.
​
After ten years in that firm, he launched his own small firm to represent individuals, families and small businesses in insurance, injury and wrongful death cases.

He has spent 40 years laboring in the trenches a practicing lawyer in a variety of contexts.

State Bar President

In 2011-12, Ken Shigley served as president of the 45,000 member State Bar of Georgia, which includes all lawyers and judges admitted to practice in Georgia. That virtually full-time volunteer job involved intense involvement with leaders of all branches of state government, and oversight of scores of committees and sections, three offices and a staff of 75. Completion of the five year cycle of State Bar leadership posts provides a “45,000 foot perspective” on Georgia’s legal system.
​
During his term as president he launched the “Next Generation Courts Commission” to bring together lawyers, judges from all classes of courts, court clerks and administrators, and myriad other stakeholders in the justice system to explore what the court system should look like in 20 years. This was chaired by Superior Court Judge Lawton Stephens of Athens.
​
At the end of his term as State Bar president, the Judicial Nominating Commission put Mr. Shigley on the “short list” for appointment to the Court of Appeals.

Family

Ken and Sally Shigley were married almost 34 years before she departed this life after a 29-year battle with recurring meningioma brain tumors. After exhausting all surgery, radiation and chemotherapy options, she died peacefully in home hospice care on June 17, 2017, with Mr. Shigley at her side.

The day she began hospice care, Sally Shigley told her husband, “Don’t quit that judge race.” A month after her death, he resumed groundwork for this campaign.

Sally and Ken had two children who are now adults.
​
Anne, 30, is married and lives in New Hampshire. She a paraprofessional in an elementary school and her husband is a telecommunications engineer at Dartmouth College. They attend Riverbank Church on the VT/NH border, which was launched as a mission of Northpoint Church in Alpharetta.
​
Ken Jr., 28, owns a fitness training business in Brookhaven and attends Passion City Church in Atlanta with his girlfriend.

I
​
Faith
Ken Shigley was raised Methodist, and for the past 35 years has been an active member of Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. He has served as an elder, teacher, stewardship chair, and currently is a trustee of the Peachtree Trust which manages bequests to the church’s endowment fund.

Vote BIGLEY for Ken SHIGLEY
for Judge, Georgia Court of Appeals

Nonpartisan Judicial Primary, May 22, 2018

About once a month, we receive a solicitation to purchase some made-up “honor” with a certificate suitable for framing designating the “best” or “top” lawyers in my practice area. Almost all are phony vanity distinctions for sale to anyone willing to pay the inflated price, but signifying nothing. I either toss them in the “round file” or post on the office refrigerator with sarcastic annotations.

This one, as Diplomate of the National College of Advocacy, actually signifies something — 400 hours of high quality, national level continuing legal education in my practice area. These hours were accumulated over the years through seminars and workshops from coast to coast in Chicago, Los Angeles,  Montreal, New Orleans, Boston, Cambridge, New York, Baltimore,  San Francisco, Las Vegas, Boca Raton, Atlanta and a lot of webinars.  I also spoke or was program chair at many of those seminars. Last year, I served as chair of the AAJ Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway & Premises Liability Section.

The National College of Advocacy is the continuing education arm of the American Association for Justice. The goal of this program is to build and develop professional knowledge through a continuing commitment to improving members’ trial skills and understanding of substantive law.  “Diplomate” is the highest level of recognition for voluntary participation in programs of the National College of Advocacy.

Ken Shigley is a past president of the State Bar of Georgia, former chair of the board of the Institute for Continuing Legal Education in Georgia, lead author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation and Practice, a Certified Civil Trial Attorney of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and a Diplomate of the National College of Advocacy. A graduate of Emory University Law School, Ken Shigley is a candidate for the Georgia Court of Appeals in 2018. 

With over 2,500 members nationwide, the section includes specialized litigation practice groups on Trucking Litigation, Bus Litigation, Traumatic Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Injury, Motorcycle Litigation, Bicycle Litigation, Resort Torts Litigation and Inadequate Security Litigation.

A primary function of the section is to provide high quality national continuing legal education (CLE) programs. Shigley appointed lawyers to be in charge of developing programs for meetings in Boca Raton (February 2016), New Orleans (April 2016) and Los Angeles (July 2016). The section will also seek to increase its offerings of highly focused webinar programs. Shigley has been a frequent speakers at Georgia and national CLE programs for more than 20 years. He has served as chair of the board of trustees of the Institute for Continuing Legal Education in Georgia and as a trustee of the Institute for Continuing Judicial Education in Georgia.

Shigley also appointed people to be in charge of generating contributions to the existing document depository, the section’s email listserv, newsletter and participation in the AAJ Political Action Committee on a bipartisan basis. He is recruiting state liaisons for each of the 50 states and District of Columbia to assist with these functions as well as a study of inflation adjustments in minimum auto insurance requirements in the states.

Other officers of the section are:

Chair-Elect – Wade F. Suthard (Elizabeth, NJ) Responsible for planning and coordinating continuing legal education programs.  He will become section chair at the July 2016 convention in Los Angeles.

Vice Chair – Kenneth H. Levinson (Chicago, IL) Responsible for promoting and growing the Section’s Document Library and Listserv.

Secretary – Matthew A. Nace (Washington, DC) Responsible for long range planning, updating of bylaws as well as traditional Secretary duties.

Newsletter Editor – Jennifer Leonhardt Ojeda (Atlanta, GA) Responsible for soliciting articles and content for the Section’s quarterly newsletter.

Parliamentarian – Jason Studinski (Plover, WI) Membership Coordinator: Responsible for coordinating membership drives and recruitment efforts. Responsible, with the Section Chair and AAJ staff, for informing all Section members about Section meeting, education programs, and events as well as all other relevant event information. PAC Coordinate state liaisons

Immediate Past Chair – Robert L. Collins (Houston, TX) Liaison with AAJ and Other Sections. (in particular, with the Litigation Group and Section Oversight Committee and the New Lawyers Section).

———————-

Ken Shigley is an Atlanta-based attorney whose practice focuses on serious personal injury and wrongful death cases. He is past president of the State Bar of Georgia, a certified civil trial attorney of the National Board of Trial Advocacy and lead author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Practice and Preparation.

When the meeting ended, my bride and I remained at the beach for a few extra days of R&R. In the words of Kenny Chesney, “no shoes, no shirt, no problems.”

Several years ago, as I prepared to enter the State Bar presidency, I got some great advice from Irwin Stolz of Athens who served as State Bar president 42 years ago. He said, “Have fun while you’re there, then get out of the way.” I had fun and now I’m getting out of the way.

It was a grand, unexpected opportunity to serve in these roles. Working hard at at it,  perhaps I planted some seeds that will take root and blossom in years to come.

Now I am delighted and re-energized to devote the balance of my career to a 100% focus on serving clients in catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases across Georgia.

I do not expect any favoritism from anyone as cases must be decided on their merits.  But if a friend or family member has a catastrophic injury or wrongful death case, would it be smarter to hire a lawyer based on a sleazy TV ad or to hire one who has recognized credentials and is known to decision makers?

Whether you choose me or someone else, by all means choose a serious lawyer for any serious case. Understand that the lawyers who spend millions on TV ads operate settlement mills, never take cases to trial, and insurance companies know they will generally settle for 10% of fair case value.

2. Invest in the interview.

An attorney’s commitment to a serious contingent fee case is a major investment of time and resources. Do your due diligence as you would with any major investment. Set aside enough time to get acquainted with the potential client, develop trust, and probe for information about the event, damages, personal history (education, work, medical, claims, criminal history, etc.) While the lawyer’s office is more convenient in many ways, consider meeting at the client’s home; it is an information rich environment.   While a screening interview can be done by phone, allow 3 or 4 hours for the initial face to face interview. Ask the prospective client to bring along, insofar as possible, the accident report, photos of vehicles, medical and auto insurance policies, any claim correspondence and medical bills and records.

Then conduct an inductive, empathic interview to gather broad and deep information. If you don’t find the case meritorious or don’t find the prospective client likeable or believable, neither will the jury.  Better to cut your losses after a long initial interview than to invest hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in a losing case.

1. Begin with the end in view.

It is tempting to assume that cases are likely to settle rather than go to trial. While most cases do settle, that assumption leads to laziness and lack of preparation. From the first phone call from a prospective client, evaluate and prepare the case with the assumption that you must be prepared to try the case. If the case would not play well at trial, it may be prudent to turn it down. This will protect you from taking cases that lack merit, clients who lack credibility, strategies that are not likely to be cost effective, and expenses that cannot be recovered.

———————-

Bar committee OKs rule change
Public defenders in same circuit would be allowed to represent co-defendants under proposed amendment

The State Bar of Georgia’s Disciplinary Rules and Procedures Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved a rule change that would allow public defenders in the same circuit to represent co-defendants unless specific conflicts of interest are identified.

The proposed amendment to the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct on imputed disqualification, also known as Rule 1.10, states: “(d) A lawyer representing a client of a public defender office shall not be disqualified under this rule because of the representation by the office of another client in the same or a substantially related matter unless there is a conflict as determined by Rules 1.7, 1.8(f) or 1.9,” which determine conflicts of interest, according to Bar President Kenneth L. Shigley.

Backers of the amendment hope it serves as a compromise in a debate that has burned hot since April 2010, when the bar approved a formal advisory opinion prohibiting intra-circuit representation of indigent criminal co-defendants. Critics of that opinion, which is pending review by the state Supreme Court, said it would result in higher costs for the cash-strapped indigent defense system as more expensive outside lawyers would need to be hired to resolve conflicts.

But some lawyers questioned whether the proposed amendment would have any significant effect.

On Wednesday, Shigley said the new rules change allowing intracircuit representation of co-defendants should help public defender offices handling cases with multiple defendants where there is only a potential conflict.”The proposed amendment to Rule of Professional Conduct 1.10 is a measured, moderate approach to representation of multiple defendants in the public defender context,” Shigley said in a written statement. “It recognizes the need for practical flexibility in administration of the statewide public defender system, without diminishing lawyers’ ethical standards or defendants’ rights to vigorous, conflict-free representation.”

. . . .

The proposed amendment will go to the bar’s Executive Committee, which is scheduled to meet on Oct. 6 in Macon. Then, it would need the approval of the bar’s Board of Governors, which will convene on Oct. 29 at Jekyll Island, and finally the state Supreme Court before going into effect.

The state high court agreed to review the formal advisory opinion last year, but in August it delayed any decision until January. Members of the bar, as well as the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, began publicly discussing a rules change that would have exempted public defenders from the conflict rules applied to private firms late this summer.

Georgia Public Defender Standards Council Director W. Travis Sakrison spoke against the formal advisory opinion during Wednesday’s hearing of the Disciplinary Rules and Procedures Committee.

According to Sakrison, the formal advisory opinion would require all public defender offices to divest themselves immediately of all co-defendants in cases where there may be a potential conflict. That rule would balloon the number of conflict cases and drain the public defender system of resources, he said. The estimated cost of finding new conflict counsel would have required the GPDSC to ask the Legislature for millions more in its budget, he said.

Instead, many circuit public defenders wanted their offices to have the ability to represent co-defendants up until the point an actual conflict arose, as long as proper ethical screens, such as separate computers and filing areas, were in place the entire time. And then, if there were an actual conflict, the public defender office could retain one of the co-defendants.

But supporters of the formal advisory opinion said the opinion supported the existing rules, which already outline conflicts and are meant to ensure adequate representation of indigent criminal defendants—a statement the Disciplinary Rules and Procedures Committee chairman, John G. Haubenreich, agreed with on Wednesday.” . . . .

————————-

A Truck Wreck Lawyer Faces the ‘Truck Wreck’ of the Judicial System After Years of Court Budget Cuts

Linton Johnson

As the newly installed 49th president of the State Bar of Georgia, Ken Shigley knows to expect the unexpected. Having served on the Executive Committee for the past four years, he had a front-row seat as his predecessors dealt with the almost-daily surprises that come with the job and require thoughtful but often swift decisions that will have an impact on the interests of more than 42,000 members.

Some of the issues will undoubtedly be more difficult than others. But if crisis management does become necessary, Shigley will benefit from formative experience gained long before he joined the Bar or even cracked open his first law school book.

In 1967, shortly after a federal judge ordered the combination of the formerly segregated high schools in Douglasville, the student council officers of Douglas County High School gathered around a pingpong table in the Shigley family’s basement. Younger generations might view that era through the movie “Mississippi Burning” and documentaries about the civil rights movement.

The group included two 16-year-old juniors, Shigley and current Douglasville attorney Joe Fowler. “We went through the school directory and identified the students most likely to have a disruptive reaction,” Shigley said. “Then we divided that list according to which of us had a rapport with each one. Our plan was to call them and gauge their reactions. Most accepted it, though perhaps reluctantly. A few talked about what they were going to do with ax handles, switchblades and the like. Our script was to let them talk until they ran out of steam and then slowly respond with, ‘You know, that’s just what they want you to do.’ Invariably those few responded, ‘I never thought about that.’”

“Perhaps that helped let the steam off a few hotheads who reflected their parents’ prejudices. In any event, we had no problems with the students during desegregation, even though the Klan was still active in the area,” said Shigley. “But when I said that in 100 years race wouldn’t matter and suggested integrating the 1968 prom—which wound up being held the weekend after Martin Luther King’s funeral—there was a lot of pushback.”

A few months later, the same group of student leaders approached the school board about proposing a bond issue to expand school facilities and organized a door-to-door student campaign to win passage. A year later, when Shigley was student council president and Fowler was senior class president, the process was repeated. “We got some schools built, and the facilities of our high school campus roughly doubled in the year after we graduated,” he said.

Law was also in Shigley’s blood by the time he graduated from high school and enrolled at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., but he is not certain how it got there. “In ninth grade registration, filling in a blank about our career plans, I wrote in ‘law.’ I don’t know why; maybe it was from watching Perry Mason. I considered some different things—business school, teaching, the ministry—but I really didn’t feel the call to do any of that. Law was always at the top of the list.”

After graduating from Furman, he returned to Georgia to attend Emory Law School. “It wasn’t as expensive then as it is now,” he said. “I came out with $8,500 in student debt, and thought it was a lot.” At Emory, one of his closest friends was John C. Sammon, who preceded Shigley to the State Bar presidency in 1993-94.

His first job out of law school, in 1977, was with the district attorney of the Tallapoosa Judicial Circuit, which then included Douglas, Haralson, Paulding and Polk counties. Almost immediately after graduation he was prosecuting felony cases across a four-county circuit. “It was a good experience, learning to stand up on my hind legs and try a case, and once toting an unloaded machine gun into the courtroom,” Shigley said. “Back then, the bailiffs called lawyers ‘colonel,’ and some of the jury boxes still had spittoons.”

When a new district attorney was elected, Shigley left and hung a general- practice shingle down the street in Douglasville. There he practiced “front-door law,” whatever came in the front door. It included a lot of domestic relations and criminal defense, with smatterings of real estate, bankruptcy, small business organization, wills, probate, commercial collections, personal injury, workers compensation, etc. He even tried a dog custody case before a justice of the peace.

Three years later, “out of the blue,” he got an offer from Van Gerpens & Rice, an insurance defense firm in Atlanta at the time. He went to work there and for the better part of a decade, he defended garden-variety tort and insurance coverage cases throughout Georgia, including liability defense work for officials and employees of most agencies of state government, before going solo again with a personal injury practice in Buckhead, initially assisted by having plaintiffs’ cases “referred to me from people I’d tried cases against.” He maintained that practice for 16 years.

Since 2008, when he was elected as secretary of the State Bar “and saw what was coming at me,” Shigley has been of counsel with Chambers, Aholt & Rickard LLP in Atlanta, joining longtime friends in a firm that provides some backup when he is pulled away by Bar duties.

A majority of the time, Shigley represents plaintiffs in serious injury and wrongful death cases arising from motor carrier accidents, “big truck wrecks.” He is the author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice (Thomson Reuters West, 2010). A frequent lecturer at Georgia and national continuing legal education programs on interstate motor carrier litigation, he has published multiple articles in state and national legal journals. He is a national board member of the American Association for Justice Interstate Trucking Litigation Group, and past chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute, Georgia Insurance Law Institute and faculty member of the Emory University School of Law Trial Techniques Program.

Since 1995, Shigley has been a certified civil trial advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy (one of 20 in Georgia) and listed in Martindale’s Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He has been included since 2004 as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta magazine) and among Georgia’s “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend).

The Bar presidency requires this truck-wreck trial lawyer to deal in depth with a broad range of issues facing the court system and legal profession. “It is invigorating to draw upon a lifetime of experiences in dealing with so many issues beyond the scope of my daily work as a lawyer,” Shigley commented. “Some might suggest that a big truck wreck is a metaphor for the challenges facing the judicial system after several years of deep budget cuts.”

Shigley’s entry into State Bar leadership came about somewhat by accident when he and his wife Sally decided to attend the 1993 Annual Meeting in Savannah as a much-needed getaway while she was still recovering from recent surgery.

“If the trip was going to be deductible, I thought I had better go to some of the meetings,” Shigley said. “I signed up for the breakfast meeting of what was then the Insurance Law Section, since Sally wanted to sleep late, not knowing anyone who was there. They had not picked a secretary/ treasurer, and I agreed to do that. The vice chair bailed, so a year later I became chairman.”

Following his term as chair, Shigley continued to serve as the section’s legislative chair, drafting and successfully advocating for new laws authorizing videotape depositions by notice rather than the former practice of requiring a detailed order or stipulation, venue over resident and non-resident defendants in a single court, and a “full compensation” rule governing reimbursement claims by health and disability insurers when an injured person recovers from a tortfeasor. “I enjoyed working with plaintiffs’ lawyers and defense lawyers coming together on proposals that made sense,” he said.

In the mid-1990s, the public, including most lawyers, was slowly being introduced to the Internet, with little or no idea what an impact it would have on our professions, our personal lives and our world. A fledging online company asked Shigley to participate in a forum on a dialup service it was launching for lawyers.

A few months later, at the meeting where he turned over chairmanship of the newly renamed Tort & Insurance Practice Section, they were discussing topics to include in the Insurance Law Institute program that fall. “I volunteered to talk about ‘practical uses of the Internet in your law practice. When I got home I realized that then, in 1995, there weren’t many. I wound up explaining what the Internet was, what e-mail was, what a website was and that at that point there were about 40 law firms in the United States that had websites.”

“That got me ahead of the curve on using the Internet,” he said. “I soon had the first lawyer website in the Southeast. I started to get some business from it, although I didn’t quite understand how. The next thing I knew, people were inviting me to speak at bar meetings and seminars about how to set up a website.”

That experience raised Shigley’s profile within the legal profession, and in 1999 he decided to run for an open seat on the Board of Governors. He lost with 49.9 percent of the vote but tried again the next year and won. In 2007, with both of his children out of high school, he was elected to the Executive Committee. An unexpected opportunity to run for secretary the following year led to another promotion.

“One thing led to another,” Shigley said of his ascension. “In the space of a year, I went from the back row of the Board of Governors to a place on the ladder to move up to the presidency.”

Shigley is a native of Mentone, Ala., which is 10 miles from Menlo, in northwest Georgia, where his parents were both educators, his father a principal and his mother a classroom teacher. “At the time, Menlo had a high school and a red light,” he said. “It hasn’t had either in a long time.” He made the daily commute with his parents across the state line and attended elementary school in Menlo. The family moved to Chattanooga, Tenn., when Ken was in the seventh grade and to Tuscaloosa, Ala., when he was in the eighth grade, before settling the next year in Douglasville, where his dad was assistant school superintendent.

These days, Shigley and his wife Sally reside in Sandy Springs, where they have lived in the same neighborhood since 1984. They have two young adult children, Anne and Ken Jr. Over the years, Shigley has served as a Boy Scout leader, youth soccer coach, elder and Sunday School teacher at Peachtree Presbyterian Church, board chairman for a child development center and board member of a Christian counseling center.

He is on the national advisory board of the Children’s Tumor Foundation NF Endurance Team, which raises funds for medical research on neurofibromatosis, the condition that made his daughter deaf. That, combined with his wife’s brain tumor surgeries and his son’s experiences with Crohn’s disease, contributed to Shigley’s interest in replicating the Louisiana Bar’s Support of Lawyers/Legal Personnel—All Concern Encouraged (SOLACE) program in Georgia as one of his main objectives for this year (see page 53).

Shigley has also run marathons in the past and would like to get back to doing that but at the moment has no spare time for training. “I’m going to be practicing law full time while serving nearly full time as Bar president,” Shigley said. “So I know there will be no time off for the next year.”

In that regard, Shigley knows the clock is already ticking on his time to get things accomplished that will, as he told the Fulton County Daily Report before taking office, “make a difference long-term.” In communicating his themes of “stewardship, calling and love” to Bar members and staff, Shigley will rely on his previous leadership experiences, dating back to high school.

“Every lesson of leadership you pick up from adolescence on really comes into play, but on a different scale and different level,” he said, “such as the ability to inspire and lead without micromanaging people. The use of the bully pulpit to get our messages across is important, talking about the need for professional and personal virtue in our individual lives. That’s the core reason I got into this.

“One thing I learned when I was a section chair is that when you’ve got a one-year term, you had better hit the ground running. You’ve got one year to do what you’re going to do. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, trying to get these things going.”

And about those unexpected events that will pop up along the way, Shigley was greeted with his first one even before he was sworn in as president. In May, Gov. Nathan Deal appointed Shigley to the 2011 Criminal Justice Reform Council, which is charged with the monumental task of finding solutions that will reduce the costs, financial and otherwise, of Georgia’s corrections system without compromising public safety.

“Having been out of criminal law for almost 30 years,” Shigley said, “I’m back in it.”

……………………………………….

It was a Sunday in December nearly 40 years ago at my grandparents’ rural home at Mentone, Ala., a bucolic spot best known for summer camps, midway between Chattanooga and Gadsden on the hundred-mile long plateau that is Lookout Mountain. Within a mile radius were the simple houses, church, school, woods, fields and country graveyards which helped define “home” for several generations of a family steeped in a morality so strict that, for some of us, it proved more aspirational than operational.

At the “children’s table,” off the kitchen with my cousins, I could faintly hear the conversation of our elders at the “grownup table” in the dining room. My father said something about “Ken” and “law school,” as he told of the path I hoped to pursue after college. The response to his announcement was strangely muted. He then explained how, similar to ministry or teaching, law could be a calling too. My grandfather, the family patriarch who served a lifetime as a minister and builder all over Alabama, and who I remember as the image of rectitude, both in the pulpit on Sundays and in a pressed work shirt and securely tucked-in tie on construction sites, made some quiet expression of resigned acceptance.

Ours was a family of preachers, teachers and builders, upright, hard-working and devout country people. Not only had there never been a lawyer in the family in living memory, but so far as I knew then, no one in the extended family had ever considered a legal career.1 We lived in Mentone until I was 12, across a pasture from the grandparents who helped mold me. Many happy hours were spent roaming the woods and catching tadpoles in a cattle pond, and I learned to shoot a rifle before I learned to ride a bike. When it came time to start school, my parents took me to work with them, 10 miles away to Menlo, Ga. Menlo was an idyllic Mayberry where my father was a school principal who wielded an effective “board of education” and my mother was a teacher and librarian who strongly encouraged memorization of inspirational poems. By the time I entered high school, we migrated to the “big city” of Douglasville, Ga.—then a country town of about 5,000 on the route of an unfinished I-20—where at night on a rural hilltop restless teenagers could see the lights of Atlanta twinkling in the distance. Visits home to the mountain grew less and less frequent.

When the remains of the feast were cleared away, and the womenfolk were clattering dishes and talking in the kitchen, Uncle Leonard took me aside. He was the only one of his generation who seldom left the mountain for more than a few days, except to pick up a piece of German shrapnel that he would carry in his body all his life. Strongly self-reliant, he lived within sight of his birthplace, building and remodeling mountain homes for city folks, while his siblings pursued degrees and careers far from their roots. In some ways he was the best of the bunch.

With a look of profound concern on his weathered face, Uncle Leonard jabbed a work-scarred finger into my chest and demanded, “Kenneth, don’t you know that it’s impossible for a lawyer to go to heaven?” In retrospect, I realize his challenge was based upon a combination of tough love and his flawed interpretation of a few verses in the King James Version of the Bible.2 In his dealings down at the county seat, including service as a part-time constable and a competitive Republican bid for sheriff when the Democratic nomination was still tantamount to election, he apparently had seen no reason to doubt his opinion.

With the cockiness of youth, I laughed off my uncle’s warning. What could this good man who I had looked up to all my life, but who left school at 16 and earned his living through hard work with a hammer and saw, possibly know about the moral and spiritual health of the profession to which I aspired? Nonetheless, I silently vowed to prove him wrong. In the four decades since, I have often recalled his words, especially on those occasions when I strayed across some line, either hazy or clear, that I should not have crossed. Moral compromises are by no means unique to the legal profession, but deeply flawed human nature being what it is, none of us are immune from temptation.

Uncle Leonard’s admonition, while delivered in the most literal, fundamentalist terms, may allegorically reveal concerns about the soul of our profession. But it also contains a hidden kernel of hope when we reflect upon our lives and motivations. Even before the economic slump of recent years, many lawyers were disenchanted with their work, unhappy with their workaholic lifestyle, and questioning the wisdom of their career choices. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor observed in a speech a few years ago:

[L]awyers, as a group, [are] a profoundly unhappy lot. . . . Attorneys are more than three times as likely as non-lawyers to suffer from depression, and they are significantly more apt to develop a drug dependence, to get divorced, or to contemplate suicide. Lawyers suffer from stress-related diseases, such as ulcers, coronary artery disease, and hypertension, at rates well above average.3

The stress lawyers experience may, in part, come from pressure to live two separate lives as a human being and a lawyer, and to prevent their overlap.4 In Dante’s Inferno, just inside the gates of hell were the morally indifferent, those “passionless people who lived without praise or blame, and thus never truly lived.”5 Dante’s “passionless people” may remind us of the compartmentalization that is all too tempting in the legal profession. 6 Contemporary law practice can induce some lawyers to hide behind a veneer of cynicism or sarcasm, evading the complications of humanity in order to live in the comfortable zone between profit maximization and the avoidance of sanctions.7 This overly rationalized zone has been described as an “ethical winter,” or a “hibernation of the soul,” which can result in cynicism and even self-contempt.8

A novelist wrote that “[a] profession is like a great snake that wraps itself around you. Once you are wrapped up, you are in a slow fight for the rest of your life, and the lightness of youth leaves you.” Of a lawyer he wrote, “I saw how greatly he suffered the requirement of being clever. It separated him from his soul, and it didn’t get him anything other than a living.”9 I recently witnessed this while dealing with a cold, humorless junior shareholder at a distant office of a huge national law firm who clearly conveyed the impression that he was a heartless automaton, devoid of humanity or compassion. Lawyers seeking to retain their souls and some remnant of the “lightness of youth” after decades of practice must seek not only to avoid punishment by following the disciplinary rules of conduct, but also to escape such cold indifference by reuniting our sense of humanity with our profession and, ultimately, recognizing the law as a passionate vocation.10

For too many of us, the law has become a mere instrument for attaining economic or social objectives; we have forgotten that “law is rooted in something bigger than the people who hand it down, that law is rooted in history and in the moral order of the universe.”11 I have been guilty of that too. In more prosperous days, high incomes often masked concerns about this. When investment banks and the most prestigious law firms could offer top law school graduates starting salaries in the nosebleed range, and their rising tide lifted our smaller boats, we could more easily rationalize that at least we were well paid. However, as the latest recession led to layoffs and downsizing in great firms and the decimation of once thriving practice areas, middle class individuals and small businesses, unable to pay customary attorney fees, turned to selfhelp resources. As a result, most of us experienced falling revenue, an ebbing tide found many of us struggling to keep up appearances of our customary success.

Rediscovering passion for service in the legal profession is an essential element in enduring hard times and a necessary step in recognizing the potential for personal fulfillment that a legal career offers. Those of us who bear the scars of long legal careers, however, know all too well how easy it is to lose sight of the intrinsic values of our work when we are laboring in the muddy trenches of the law for long hours day by day, besieged with phone calls and e-mails, stressed out about deadlines and seemingly insoluble conflicts, struggling to meet billing requirements, cover overhead, make payroll, feed all the mouths we are expected to feed, and reserve some personal space in our lives.

Viewed with the right perspective, the law can offer some of the best opportunities to help people who are hurting and to temper and resolve human conflict.12 If we view our professional role as a high calling, as a place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger, then we may find in the act of helping people solve their problems a value that transcends our fluctuating material rewards.13 Blooming where we are planted, we may find that we are called to serve as instruments of justice and love—sometimes love as tough as Uncle Leonard’s—in whatever workday roles we hold. Prosecutors and defense lawyers are called not only to serve the positions of state and defendant, but to help assure that wrongdoers—and only wrongdoers—are punished, and that punishment justly fits the offense and the offender. Judges are called to firmly, fairly and impartially administer justice in their communities in a manner that respects the humanity of all who come before them. Personal injury lawyers can enforce responsibility and accountability of those who carelessly cause harm, while helping clients regain the dignity and independence that has been diminished by injury or the untimely death of a family member. Insurance defense lawyers may protect corporate resources from baseless claims, while encouraging their clients to fairly resolve cases that have merit. Estate planners assist and encourage their clients’ stewardship and love for their families and communities. Corporate lawyers may see themselves as called to structure entities and transactions that help create jobs and economic growth. Intellectual property lawyers safeguard the fruit of innovation that is essential to progress and prosperity. Real estate lawyers may be called to help families, businesses and communities secure a physical environment that promotes growth and productivity. Small town lawyers practicing “front door law”—whatever comes in the front door—may have the best opportunities to positively impact the lives of both their clients and their communities.14 The potential examples are as varied as the legal profession itself.

Compared to the infinite scale and complexity of the universe, our lives seem trivial and limited. But in this snippet of time and space we occupy, we are called to interpret the moral order of creation into pragmatic, common sense legal solutions for the messy problems presented to us, and to use our skills to temper the chaos to which human nature gives rise.15 Being able to recognize this calling and our peace-making and problem-solving abilities may allow us to regain, and live with, a sense of passion and purpose.

Through it all, we should be thankful for the opportunity to work and serve in the law, rekindling a more mature and probably less self-important version of whatever first inspired us to pursue legal careers. Laying aside elitist pretensions of professional arrogance, we can pursue more conscientious and effective relationships with clients and colleagues. 16 In the words of the prophet Micah, we should seek to “do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.”17 In so doing, we should prudently seek practical and effective ways in which we can no longer conform to the flawed patterns of this world, and can instead be transformed by the renewal of our minds.18

Perhaps more in lean years than in fat years, we in the legal profession have the opportunity to serve justice, to renew our commitment to the Constitution’s promise of justice for all and to strengthen the best traditions of the justice system as the essential infrastructure of liberty and prosperity. In our brief time, we must do our part to restore the traditional leadership role of the legal profession as a pillar of our communities, our state and country, and in so doing, help to reverse national decline and usher in what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.”19

When I return to Mentone and walk among the graves of strong forbearers who followed their own callings—my great-grandfather the builder and farmer who helped found a church and a school, my grandfather the minister and builder, my father the educator, and Uncle Leonard who issued that stark warning—I pray that before the end I might prove worthy of them and of the calling I follow in the law.

This helps to level the playing field for solo and small firm lawyers with tight budgets.

Ken Shigley is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia.  He is also author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice and a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy. He has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases.  This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

It’s a serious responsibility, but I will take care not to take myself too seriously.

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to see how things get done in the State Bar. And I have seen how good ideas can be thwarted despite years of hard work. 

To accomplish anything of lasting practical significance for the legal profession and the public, it is essential to prudently discern what is both worthwhile and feasible, focus on clear priorities, use limited time wisely, delegate effectively, and emphasize teamwork and continuity.  If granted a year at the helm, that is what I will seek to do.

Currently I serve as treasurer of the State Bar, a position that enables me to get a highly detailed view of the Bar’s operations, in addition to serving on the Executive Committee. Previously I served as secretary, as a committee chair, section chair, and a decade on the Board of Governors.

Nominations will be made at the Board of Governors meeting on January 9, 2009, with the election in the spring. If elected, I will be president-elect from June 2010 to June 2011, and president from June 2011 to June 2012.

No other candidates have come forward at this point. However, until the nominations are closed I will continue to prepare for a another competitive statewide campaign, building upon lessons learned in the election as secretary of the State Bar two years ago.

Some of the other topics covered in the interstate trucking seminar included:

• Overlooked Issues in Maximizing Damages in a Trucking Case
• Unique Discovery Issues in Trucking Cases
• When Low Speeds Can Cause Big Injuries: Understanding What Happens When a Big Truck Hits a Small Car
• Overdriving Headlights and Other Night Driving Issues in Interstate Trucking Cases
• Truck vs. Motorcycle
• Ethical Considerations in Interstate Trucking Cases
• The Small Commercial Vehicle Case
• Finding Insurance in Truck Crash Cases
• Brain Injuries in Trucking Cases

Though I have to leave for the airport before the business meeting, I will go on the board of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group, and will be on the faculty of the “trucking litigation college” program this fall.

For criteria useful in selecting an attorney, see The Smart Consumer’s Guide to Hiring a Great Lawyer.

Ken Shigley is a trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia who has been listed among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale).  He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Mr. Shigley has extensive experience representing parties in trucking and bus accidents, products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, brain injury, spinal cord injury and burn injury cases.  Currently he is Treasurer of the 40,000 member State Bar of Georgia.

They got me involved a couple of weeks after the crash when one of the sons found me on the Internet and invited me to meet with the family.  We put our rapid response strategy to work and are now on the brink of settling the case for all available insurance policy limits. 

Because I agreed to reduce my contingent fee to 20% if we settled within the first 60 days after delivery of the demand package to the defendant and insurance company, it turns out to be a win-win situation for everyone, with quick closure on the most favorable possible terms for the family.

In our conversation today, they told me about being deluged with calls from “grief counselors” and “patient counselors” asking if they had a lawyer yet —  while dad was in still in the hospital trauma unit. These “counselors” were obviously sleazy “runners” seeking to solicit the case for legal vultures.

When they got home a few days later, even before mom’s funeral, they had a package in the mail from a law firm out of state, soliciting the case.

Georgia Rule of Professional Conduct 7.3, regarding Direct Contact with Prospective Clients, provides in part:

(a) A lawyer shall not send, or knowingly permit to be sent, on behalf of the lawyer, the lawyer’s firm, lawyer’s partner, associate, or any other lawyer affiliated with the lawyer or the lawyer’s firm, a written communication to a prospective client for the purpose of obtaining professional employment if: . . .

(3) the written communication concerns an action for personal injury or wrongful death or otherwise relates to an accident or disaster involving the person to whom the communication is addressed or a relative of that person, unless the accident or disaster occurred more than 30 days prior to the mailing of the communication; or

(4) the lawyer knows or reasonably should know that the physical, emotional or mental state of the person is such that the person could not exercise reasonable judgment in employing a lawyer.

(b) Written communications to a prospective client, other than a close friend, relative, former client or one whom the lawyer reasonably believes is a former client, for the purpose of obtaining professional employment shall be plainly marked “Advertisement” on the face of the envelope and on the top of each page of the written communication in type size no smaller than the largest type size used in the body of the letter.

(c) A lawyer shall not compensate or give anything of value to a person or organization to recommend or secure the lawyer’s employment by a client, or as a reward for having made a recommendation resulting in the lawyer’s employment by a client; except that the lawyer may pay for public communications permitted by Rule 7.1 and except  . . .  [the exceptions do not include use of “runners” to solicit injury and death cases.]

(d) A lawyer shall not solicit professional employment as a private practitioner for the lawyer, a partner or associate through direct personal contact or through live telephone contact, with a non-lawyer who has not sought advice regarding employment of a lawyer.

(e) A lawyer shall not accept employment when the lawyer knows or it is obvious that the person who seeks to employ the lawyer does so as a result of conduct by any person or organization prohibited under Rules 7.3(c)(1), 7.3(c)(2) or 7.3(d): Direct Contact with Prospective Clients.

The maximum penalty for a violation of this Rule is disbarment.

One of the weaknesses of the organized bar has been the lack of effective means of enforcing these rules against improper solicitation.  If no one files a grievance against the offenders, nothing can be done. A lot of this behavior is simply never reported and therefore never addressed.

I will take the information from these clients and prepare grievances against any attorneys we can identify who participated in improper solicitation.  If they are in other states and made such solicitations in Georgia, we will urge reciprocal discipline in their home states.

If you are solicited for a personal injury or wrongful death case by a phone call or other direct contact  from an “investigator,” “grief counselor” or “patient counselor,” there is a very high probability that it is an unethical and illegal solicitation on behalf of a lawyer or law firm who does not mind breaking the ethical rules. 

Do you really want to entrust your case to someone like that? 

If you are solicited about your injury or death case, you may consider doing the following:

• Immediately call the General Counsel of the State Bar and report the improper solicitation. The phone number of the General Counsel of the State Bar of Georgia is 404-527-8720.
• Offer to assist in investigation of this misconduct and to file a formal grievance against any lawyer who can be proven to be participating in improper solicitation.
• If you ask, and if the provable facts support it, I will assist without charge in drafting a formal grievance against any lawyer who solicits you in violation of the Rules, even if you do not hire me for your injury case. (I cannot intrude on the confidential Bar disciplinary process, but  I can assist in drafting your grievance.)
• If you need a lawyer for a personal injury or wrongful death case, make your selection on the basis of your own research about professional experience and qualifications, and recommendations by knowledgeable people whom you know and trust, rather than slick advertising or someone soliciting you directly.

An article by Ian Urbina in The New York Times tells the sad tale of how two Pennsylvania judges have pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks, and now have been named as defendants in a class action suit  for the scheme to  send juveniles to private detention facilities.

While judicial misconduct is rare, where it occurs it should be addressed forcefully in order to safeguard the integrity of the judicial system.and public confidence. In Georgia, I am increasingly concerned about the appearance of improper conduct in one of our courts involving a retired court staff member.  Probably only the U. S. Attorney has the tools to deal with this.

While the Federal government providing some funding through the Legal Services Corporation, all states have adopted Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts programs in which interest earned on funds that typically remain in our trust accounts for just a few days support legal aid for the poor.  In Georgia, IOLTA funds go to the Bar Foundation which in turn funds Georgia Legal Services.

Much of the money passing through lawyer trust accounts is related to real estate transactions. In this economy, the volume of those real estate transactions is way down. Combine that with the decline of interest rates to record lows, and you have a “perfect storm.” 

I don’t yet have a handle on how much IOLTA funding will be down, but it is clear the impact on funding for Legal Services for the poor will fall dramatically, just as the need is increased just as dramatically.   Unless voluntary contributions multiply, the impact will be severe.

The Legal Services Program certainly has its detractors.  Perhaps in this financial crisis, alternative ways should be developed to supplement the Legal Services program and provide basic legal services for the poor.  

Ken Shigley is a trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia who has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale), and is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy,. Mr. Shigley has extensive experience representing parties in trucking and bus accidents, products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, brain injury, spinal cord injury and burn injury cases.  Currently he is Secretary of the 40,000 member State Bar of Georgia.

Ken Shigley is an Atlanta trial lawyer focused on interstate trucking litigation. He currently serves as Secretary of the State Bar of Georgia.

Today I got word of appointment to the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Continuing Legal Education in Georgia. My thoughts trailed back 15 years to the first ICLE program I chaired, “Insurance Law for the General Practitioner,” in the fall of 1993.

It is impossible to overstate the vital importance of continuing legal education to maintain the competence of any member of the legal profession in any practice area.  The minimum required CLE for all Georgia lawyers is pretty basic.  I never cease to be amazed at the lawyers who resent and resist attending continuing legal education programs and wind up getting their hours in a video replay on some topic irrelevant to their practice the week before the final deadline for the year.

Ken Shigley  is Secretary of the State Bar of Georgia, and has been designated as a “Super Lawyer” in Atlanta Magazine and one of the “Legal Elite” in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, on the national advisory board of the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America, and former chair of both the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He focuses his practice on representation of plaintiffs in catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases, especially those  arising from  motor carrier wrecks and accidents.