From the President: Honoring Judge Michael Hancock

by Matthew McCoyd

This year the DeKalb Bar Association honors Judge Michael E. Hancock with our Pioneer Award, for his years of service and leadership to the DeKalb County Bench, Bar, and public. Here are some of the many ways in which he has been a leader in our profession and in our community:

For nearly 29 years, Judge Hancock has served the citizens of DeKalb County as a judge, serving in all courts of the DeKalb Judicial System, except Probate Court. His interest in attending law school was sparked in 1974 when he left his position as an investigator with the DeKalb Juvenile Court to attend law school.

He graduated from Emory University Law School in 1978. During law school, he clerked for Margie Pitts Hames’ law firm, for Judge Romae T. Powell at the Fulton County Juvenile Court, and for the law firm of Arrington, Winter and Goger. After law school, to pay it forward, he spent a year in the domestic counterpart of the Peace Corps as a Volunteer in Service to America. He was assigned to the Atlanta Legal Aid Society’s Senior Citizens Law Project. From there he went to work for Georgia Legal Services in Gainesville, Ga. He later served as assistant public defender in Fulton County.

Judge Hancock has blazed a number of trails in the DeKalb County legal system. He was a pioneer as the county’s first African-American assistant public defender (1979), assistant solicitor general (1983), and as the first black full-time and chief judge of the DeKalb Recorders Court (1983), where he served until April 1991. History was again made when Governor Zell Miller appointed him to the DeKalb Superior Court bench, a position he has held for nearly 21 years.

Please join me in thanking Judge Hancock for his years of exemplary leadership and service.