Articles Posted in Legal Profession

Lawyers and paralegals who had previously worked at personal injury firms that advertise heavily on television, billboards and bus placards have told me many tales about the business model of those firms. They have told me how lawyers may be responsible for 600 cases at a time, with 100 or more in litigation. They have…

A few times every year, parents of college students considering law school ask me to talk with their offspring about which Georgia law schools they should consider. Before responding to that question, there is always a conversation about why they want to go to law school, priorities in life, and other options for life and…

No matter how many years a lawyer has practiced, there is no end to the need for exposure to bright new ideas from the best lawyers around the United States. Over the past year, I had the opportunity to serve as chair of the Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway and Premises Liability Section of the American…

Versions of this article were published by Ken Shigley as a president’s column in the Georgia Bar Journal (August 2011) and as the chairman’s column in the American Association for Justice Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway & Premises Liability Section Newsletter (Spring 2016).   James[1] had great unrealized potential. Son of a minister in another Southern…

A lawyer’s calling Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. – Isaiah 1:17 It was a Sunday in December 1971, at my grandparents’ home in Mentone, Alabama, halfway down the hundred-mile-long plateau from Chattanooga to Gadsden that is Lookout Mountain.…

Proposed new Georgia Judicial Building, future home of Supreme Court and Court of Appeals It appears that by time he leaves office at the beginning of 2019, Governor Nathan Deal will have: Fortunately, he will have done all that without harming the civil justice system. Some conservative politicians condemn trial lawyers and are drawn to “tort…

The one time I met the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, he talked about how much he loved hunting quail. It is good that he was able to spend his last day in this mortal realm on a quail hunt. Back in 2012, when I was president of the State Bar of Georgia, Justice Scalia…

U.S. Courthouse, Atlanta Dax Lopez is a judge of the State Court of DeKalb County, nominated by lame-duck President Obama to fill a vacant seat  on the U.S. District court in Atlanta, as an apparent bipartisan compromise to fill the seat with Republican approval.  Surprisingly for an Obama nominee, Judge Lopez is a conservative Republican, a…

When I started practicing law in 1977, hardly anyone but TV stations had video cameras, which at the time were heavy, tripod-mounted and extremely expensive. The idea of being able to play a video recording of an event in court would have seemed like science fiction if anyone had been so fanciful as to suggest …

  Almost all personal injury and wrongful death cases in the United States are handled on a contingent fee basis. That means that the lawyer is paid only in proportion to the amount recovered for the client. If there is no recovery, the lawyer is not paid. If money is recovered from the other side,…