insights, news and announcements for our members, colleagues and community
The March Family Law Section Breakfast was held at its customary location, the Harrison Room on the second floor of the Old DeKalb County Courthouse. Our guest speaker, the Honorable Gregory Adams from DeKalb Superior Court, was enthusiastically received by…
The Lawyers Foundation is seeking items for its annual Silent Auction, which will be held June 17-19 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the State Bar of Georgia. The charity of choice for Georgia Lawyers, the foundation serves a vital and unique role in the legal community as the philanthropic arm of the State Bar of Georgia.
We have tabulated the results of our annual member survey. We received 93 responses to our questions. 1. The DeKalb Bar has replaced two of our monthly luncheon meetings this year (October and February) with other events such as breakfast…
by Denise Warner
DBA President Denise Warner
The recession has caused many industries to become creative in ways to provide services to customers. Several years ago, the communications industry began bundling telephone, cable and Internet services to make billing and payment easier for customers. The benefit for the industry is to assure that the customer purchases more than one product.
Unbundled legal services or “limited scope representation” refers to ways in which an individual and a lawyer can determine which parts of a case make most sense for the person to do and which the lawyer should handle. These methods allow litigants to control their legal costs by performing some work themselves, but, at the same time, have the benefit of legal advice and assistance when needed.
Justice David E. Nahmias
Justice David E. Nahmias was appointed to the Supreme Court of Georgia on Aug. 13, 2009, by Governor Sonny Perdue. Before his appointment, Justice Nahmias (pronounced NAH-mee-iss) served as the United States attorney in Atlanta from December 2004 until resigning to accept the appointment as a Justice.
Justice Nahmias was born in Atlanta on Sept. 11, 1964. He attended Briarcliff High School and was the state’s STAR student in 1982. He attended Duke University, where he graduated second in his class and summa cum laude in 1986, and Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1991 and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review (along with President Barack Obama). Justice Nahmias then clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States.
by the Shadow
Odds are, Dear Reader, that you are reading this missive on a computer monitor and that no tree need make the ultimate sacrifice for you to read the Shadow’s quiet rants and ramblings. But what about the Georgia widget manufacturer who receives an emailed purchase order for a container of widgets that must be placed on a slow boat to China?
While the Internet is the perfect purveyor of instant gratification – Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, and so forth – how well can this electronic medium memorialize a legally enforceable contract? Must our manufacturer commit arborcide to have an ink-and-paper contract before she can confidently part with her precious widgets? Will the delay created by snail-mail delivery of the inked contract deprive the slow boat of its container of widgets? Can our manufacturer go to court to enforce the emailed contract if the buyer decides to reject or fails to pay for the widgets?
by Jeri Kagel, M.Ed., J.D.
I began writing for the DeKalb Bar newsletter this past fall. I was eager to convey my thoughts, ideas and experiences as a trial consultant to a broad spectrum of attorneys: attorneys who go to trial and those who rarely try a case; attorneys curious about the psychology of their clients and decision-makers (jurors, judges, arbitrators, attorneys and others); attorneys interested in focusing on how different methods of communicating information influence what people learn and understand; attorneys wondering how their practice resonates with their own personal energy, goals and well-being.
As we began 2010, we decided to continue this column and give it an ongoing title. I wanted the title to capture my goals for writing while encouraging people to read my column. I took a month off to let ideas percolate and was lucky enough to meet with my web designer who suggested what you now see in front of you: Litigator’s Playbook.