A great trial lawyer passed from the scene last week after a valiant battle with cancer. Fred Orr has served as president of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association just last year. He was a trial lawyer for 46 years and practiced the last 35 years in the same building near the courthouse in Decatur.

Fred was a passionate advocate for his clients and his political candidates. He had many wins, and like any trial lawyer, also came in second enough to keep him humble.

His greatest win was a public interest case. In the Presidential Parkway case a generation ago, Fred led the legal battle against construction of in which the an eight-lane freeway through much of the historic Druid Hills community. The highway would have destroyed numerous parks, churches, the Fernbank Science Center, a virgin forest. and hundreds of historic homes in DeKalb County. Fred was a David going up against Goliath, but won at trial and on appeal.

Fred, old friend, you will be sorely missed. I will even miss all the emails seeking contributions for your candidates!

Ken Shigley is treasurer of the State Bar of Georgia, of which he has been elected to become president-elect on 6/19/10 and president on 6/4/11.

Mr. Shigley is a truck and bus safety trial attorney representing seriously injured people and families of people killed in tractor trailer, big rig, semi, intermodal container freight, log truck, cement truck, dump truck, log truck and bus accidents statewide in Georgia.  He has extensive experience representing parties in interstate trucking collision cases, He served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute and is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice.

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 (Martindale). In addition to trucking litigation, he has broad experience in products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, spinal cord injury, brain injury and burn injury cases.

This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

While my daily work in Georgia centers on litigation about tractor trailer wrecks, like most attorneys I have a peripheral interest in U. S. Supreme Court nominations.

News this morning is that President Obama will nominate Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.  She is a former Harvard Law School dean and currently Solicitor General of the United States. The Solicitor General represents the federal government in the Supreme Court and is sometimes referred to as the "tenth justice" because of the close working relationship between that office and the Supreme Court.

If Kaplan is confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice, the next question is who will be tapped as the next Solicitor General. This is of somewhat more than academic interest to me because an Atlantan with whom I have worked in litigation was in the running for that job when Kagan got it in early 2009.  Teresa Wynn Roseborough, formerly at the Sutherland firm in Atlanta and currently chief litigation counsel for MetLife in New York, clerked for the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, has been a finalist for an Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals post, was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Clinton Administration, and was frequently mentioned as a likely Solicitor General when Obama was elected.  I count Teresa and her husband Joseph as friends.

Both Kagan and my friend Teresa Roseborough are significantly more liberal than I am on a number of controversial issues. (One likely would not be a member of the Christian Legal Society for 35 years without being a bit socially conservative.) But I deeply respect the abilities and character of both women.

Ken Shigley was recently elected president-elect of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia. His law practice focuses on representing people who are catastrophically injured, and families of those killed, primarily in  trucking and bus accidents, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, spinal cord injury , brain injury,  burn injury , products liability,and cases. Much of his practice is focused on tractor trailer, big rig, 18 wheeler, truck and bus crashes.  He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy,  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). 

 For criteria to be considered in selecting an attorney, see The Smart Consumer's Guide to Hiring a Great Lawyer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

Today's Wall Street Journal includes a good piece by Peggy Noonan, who was a speechwriter for President Reagan.  In  "Look Ahead With Stoicism - and Optimism,"  she makes the point that while many institutions of society have failed in the first decade of this century, we can rebuild them by taking personal responsibility and focusing on the core mission of the institutions in which we labor.

Next Saturday, my name will be placed in nomination for president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia, to serve as president in June 2011 to June 2012. The Georgia Bar clearly is not one of those "failed institutions" about which Noonan writes. It has had a long string of sound leadership and outstanding continuity of sound professional management by top staff. 

But no institution is safe if its leaders forget their purpose. We can ill afford for anyone serving as president to drop the baton.

The stated purposes of the State Bar of Georgia are: 

(a) to foster among the members of the bar of this State the principles of duty and service to the public;

(b) to improve the administration of justice; and

(c) to advance the science of law.

That is a broad statement of the mission of the organization, but one we should not forget.  We must do the things implicit in those purposes, and we must do them well.

"Mission creep" can be the kudzu of any institution. As we review our programs and budget, we should keep the purposes of the Bar in focus. When we consider attractive, idealistic proposals that do not clearly relate to the core purposes of the Bar, we must ask whether they are appropriate uses of Bar members' mandatory dues.

Ken Shigley, an Atlanta attorney, is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group. His practice focuses on representing people who are catastrophically injured, and families of those killed, primarily in commercial truck and bus accidents. Mr. Shigley also has extensive experience representing parties in  products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, brain injury, spinal cord injury and burn injury cases. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy,  has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale), and among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine).

Mr. Shigley is currently unopposed as a candidate for president-elect, of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia, of which he has served as secretary and treasurer.

 For criteria to be considered in selecting an attorney, see The Smart Consumer's Guide to Hiring a Great Lawyer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

Too often I hear of injury victims who were directly solicited by phone or in a hospital by "runners" working for lawyers in Atlanta or elsewhere in Georgia. If you or a loved on is solicited after suffering an injury, you should know that any lawyer who participates in that sort of solicitation is subject to disbarment if caught.

Georgia Rule of Professional Conduct 7.3 provides, in part, as follows: 

(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.

Solicitations of accident victims by mail are improper within the first 30 days after the injury. Rule 7.3 also provides:

(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;

I have seen instances of even out of state firms that are not licensed to practice law in Georgia directly soliciting a widow before the spouse's body is buried. They are subject to reciprocal discipline in their home state for violation of these rules in Georgia.

The maximum penalty for a violation of  Rule 7.3 is disbarment.

Would you really want your important case to be handled by a bottom feeding scumbag of a lawyer so unethical and desperate that he is willing to risk losing his license to practice law if he is caught in that solicitation?

If you receive such a solicitation, get the name and number of the caller and then immediately call the State Bar of Georgia Office of General Counsel  at (404) 527-8720, and offer to assist in investigation and file a grievance for violation of Rule 7.3.

The State Bar needs to enforce the ethical rules and uphold virtue in the legal profession, but it cannot make strong disciplinary cases against such unethical lawyers without evidence required to support a prosecution.

Ken Shigley, an Atlanta attorney, launched the first law firm web site in Georgia in 1996, and the second lawyer blog in the state. He is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group. His practice focuses on representing people who are catastrophically injured, and families of those killed, primarily in commercial trucking and bus accidents. Mr. Shigley also has extensive experience representing parties in  products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, brain injury, spinal cord injury and burn injury cases. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy,  has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale), and among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine).

Mr. Shigley is currently unopposed as a candidate for president-elect, of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia, of which he has served as secretary and treasurer.

 For criteria to be considered in selecting an attorney, see The Smart Consumer's Guide to Hiring a Great Lawyer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

Having practiced law in Georgia for 32 years, and having been somewhat involved in the Bar, I now find that a lot of my old friends and classmates have become judges. A lot of them were friends long before they put on a black robe and will be friends after they retire from the bench.

Now the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has ruled, under the authority of the Florida Supreme Court, that judges and lawyers cannot be "friends" on Facebook and other social media, even if they are friends offline.

So a couple of days ago, over a lunch with a judge who is a true friend, we decided to "defriend" each other on Facebook. Then we had coffee and dessert, and parted as friends.

Ken Shigley, an Atlanta attorney, launched the first law firm web site in Georgia in 1996, and the second lawyer blog in the state. He is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group. His practice focuses on representing people who are catastrophically injured, and families of those killed, primarily in commercial trucking and bus accidents. Mr. Shigley also has extensive experience representing parties in  products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, brain injury, spinal cord injury and burn injury cases. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy,  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).  Currently he is treasurer, and unopposed as a candidate for president-elect, of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia.

 For criteria to be considered in selecting an attorney, see The Smart Consumer's Guide to Hiring a Great Lawyer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

"Run-of-the-Mill Justice" by Stanford Law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom, published in a recent issue of Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, analyzes the practices of "settlement mill" law firms -- those that "advertise aggressively, sign a higher percentage of callers to contract, delegate more duties to non-lawyers, file fewer lawsuits, and take far fewer cases to trial" than legitimate law firms and attorneys. 

Over the past three decades, no development in the legal services industry has been more widely observed and less carefully scrutinized than the emergence of firms I call “settlement mills”—high-volume personal injury law practices that aggressively advertise and mass produce the resolution of claims, typically with little client interaction and without initiating lawsuits, much less taking claims to trial. Settlement mills process  tens of thousands of claims each year. Their ads are fixtures on late-night television and big-city billboards.

These settlement mills differ from conventional law practices because they settle everything, and do so without the negotiator having the benefit of "(1) first-hand information about verdicts obtained in comparable cases, (2) detailed information about the intricacies of the particular claim, and (3) the proven willingness and ability to take the claim to court."

Settling all cases  -- including the catastrophic cases --  cheaply in relation to the value the cases would have at trial, the settlement mills lack the ability to credibly move cases to jury trial, but offer insurance companies quick, cheap settlements.

Attorneys at settlement mills handle an extraordinarily high number of cases, necessarily treating them in "cookie cutter" fashion. Consequently, they spend "little time engaged in legal research, investigating claims, and preparing pleadings." The article reports that "one Georgia settlement mill attorney reports that she personally settled approximately 600 to 700 claims in a thirteen-month span." 

Client screening and even settlement negotiations are delegated to non-lawyers. Cases may go from intake to settlement without any attorney contact.

Many of these settlement mills seldom file suit ior investigate cases, and almost never take a case to trial or refer to a firm that is capable of doing so.

Negotiations with insurance adjusters may take no more than ten minutes, and then clients are pressured to take whatever it offered. (Thus the slogan "one call that's all" may be literally true -- one call to the insurance company is all you get.)

Such settlement mills prey upon uneducated and unsophisticated people.

Such firms rely upon heavy TV advertising. Since TV advertising lawyers are stigmatized among lawyers and judges, the attorneys in those firms no longer feel bound by a need to maintain good reputations in the profession. Thus, there is no need to do good work for clients in order to maintain a strong reputation among other attorneys. If a lawyer relies solely upon heavy advertising to produce clients, reputation and relationships do not matter. All he needs is a heavy advertising budget and a steady flow of unsophisticated, unsuspecting clients to sell down the river.

They negotiate claims on the basis of formulas that have little to do with the value of cases if they were taken to trial.

The article concludes that insurance companies like settlement mills because they settle quickly and cheaply, even in catastrophic cases, without litigation.

 Such law firms are able to operate in this manner only because federal courts bar tough regulation of legal advertising, and their operations operate "under the radar" because they almost never file their cases in courts. They are the kudzu of the legal system, operating in a manner generally contrary to the interest of their clients and the public, and just as hard as kudzu to limit.

Ken Shigley, an Atlanta attorney, is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group. His practice focuses on representing people who are catastrophically injured, and families of those killed, primarily in commercial trucking and bus accidents. Mr. Shigley also has extensive experience representing parties in  products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, brain injury, spinal cord injury and burn injury cases. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy,  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).  Currently he is treasurer, and unopposed as a candidate for president-elect, of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia.

 For criteria to be considered in selecting an attorney, see The Smart Consumer's Guide to Hiring a Great Lawyer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .