December 2011

(The following President’s column appeared in the December 2011 issue of the Georgia Bar Journal.)

My first job after law school was as an assistant district attorney in the small town where I had graduated from high school. I was 26 but in blue jeans rather than a suit could have passed for a decade younger. We covered four mostly rural counties. Abe Lincoln might have recognized the circuit-riding aspect of that life, but for the fact that I traveled by ’73 Dodge Dart instead of by horse.

The veteran DA was in his last term. Once when…

Today’s news in Atlanta includes an article about a man who had 40 years of productive life after an injury that left him a quadriplegic paralyzed from the neck down. Charlie Miller had just graduated from high school when he was shot in 1970.  When he was injured he had planned to go to college. Nineteen years later  he  graduated from Georgia State.  He read voraciously, volunteered proofreading veterans’ applications for medical assistance, and became a hero to the Atlanta Legal Aid Society’s Disability Rights Project because he lived a full life in the community with quadriplegia for over 40…