PRESIDENT ' S MESSAGE
Message From the President
CRAIG CLELAND Ogletree , Deakins , Nash , Smoak & Stewart , PC Craig . Cleland @ ogletreedeakins . com
Zooms at Noon
Our monthly Zooms at Noon are an exciting way that the Atlanta Bar Association is evolving in response to the pandemic . Each month , for one hour on a Tuesday at noon — and free to Bar members — we are spotlighting cutting-edge thinkers and issues in the law . While being state-of-the-art is nothing new to the Atlanta Bar , doing it this way is , and the response has been great . Here is what ’ s on tap in the next few months :
• January 12th at Noon : Alec Karakatsanis — who is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps in Washington , D . C ., Public Justice ’ s 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year , and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ’ 2018 Champion of Public Defense — spoke about his ideas and his work as a public defender and civil rights lawyer . Slate calls Alec ’ s book , Usual Cruelty : The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System , a “ compelling and damning argument that lawyers play a central role in rendering the criminal legal system unjust .” For more about Alec , check out https :// www . civilrightscorps . org / team / staff . Emory University Law School ’ s 2019 Outstanding Professor of the Year , Fred Smith Jr ., who clerked for Justice Sonia Sotomayor , led the discussion with Alec .
• February 16th at Noon : Thomas Wilson Mitchell — a law professor at Texas A & M University and a 2020 MacArthur
Genius Grant Fellow — will review the last 150 or so years of African-American land acquisition and loss . Then he ’ ll turn to what heirs ’ property is , how its problems are so prevalent in low-income and low-wealth communities which are disproportionately but not exclusively communities of color , and how the problem is a rural and an urban one . Next , Thomas will survey the legal and policy solutions for these problems — including the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act , which he drafted and Georgia has adopted , as well as the 2018 federal Farm Bill . More about Thomas and his work at https :// www . macfound . org / fellows / 1065 /. Sarah Stein , a former Atlanta Legal Aid lawyer who now practices in the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta ’ s Community and Economic Development Team , will moderate .
• March 16th at Noon : A great panel — Jesica Eames ( a former King & Spalding lawyer , now a therapist ), Robert " Bob " Rubenstein ( a top criminal-defense lawyer in Atlanta ), and Dr . Elizabeth " Lisa " Boswell , M . D . ( an Atlanta psychiatrist , who ’ s married to King & Spalding partner Jim Boswell )— will talk about both the resilience and coping skills needed to practice in this demanding profession as well as how our law practice and our legal training can get in the way of healthy interpersonal relationships and our happiness . More details to follow .
• April 20th at Noon : Elizabeth " Beth " Chamblee Burch — who holds the Fuller E . Callaway Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law where she teaches civil procedure , class actions , and mass torts — will talk about mass tort cases and her ideas in her book Mass Tort Deals : Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation . A former lawyer at Holland & Knight
4 December / January 2021