celebrating service
Atlanta Legal Aid Society 2012 Service Awards
By Angie Tacker
Atlanta Legal Aid Society, Inc.
[email protected]
The Randall L. Hughes Lifetime
Commitment to Legal Services Award
William H. Kitchens, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP
William H. “Bill” Kitchens,
a native of Newnan, Georgia,
who has practiced law at
Arnall Golden Gregory since
1973, is a constant source of
inspiration and creativity for
Atlanta Legal Aid executive
and fundraising staff. Bill has
a long history of supporting
legal services to the poor in
general and Atlanta Legal
Aid in particular. He headed
a committee of the Access
to Justice Committee looking
at increased funding for legal
William H. “Bill” Kitchens aid across the state. He was
chair of Legal Aid’s Annual
Campaign in 2008 and then when our current financial
troubles made it clear that maintaining our support would be
difficult in 2009, he offered to chair that campaign. He is the
first chair to have been willing to take the task twice. Both
campaigns exceeded goals. Bill enthusiastically serves on
most of our fundraising committees and continues to serve
as a vital part of the Annual Campaign team. Bill’s Legal Aid
legacy includes inspiring a unique CLE program using our
documentary One Law for All to tell the story of Legal Aid
to hundreds of lawyers this year alone. He is dedicated to
always being on call for Atlanta Legal Aid, ready and willing
to solve any problem and muster any resource, making
him an irreplaceable member of the Legal Aid family. Bill
embodies the Randall Hughes tradition of tireless devotion
to Atlanta Legal Aid through his commitment to protect and
expand the program’s resources and its reputation in the
Atlanta legal community.
Innovations in Pro Bono Service
Investigative Accounting Group LLC
A woman walked into the office of Gwinnett Legal Aid attorney
Hee Ryu with the problems of a typical Legal Aid client.
Client X, fleeing an abusive marriage, had no resources and
was destitute. She was in desperate need of a permanent
child support order. Digging deeper, Hee discovered some
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THE ATLANTA LAWYER
October 2012
Adrienne Kimball
Laurie Dyke
atypical issues in Client X’s case. It turned out that Mr. X, a
trained accountant, was hiding resources from his ex-wife.
To unravel the tangles of his untruths, Hee sent subpoenas
to five banks, obtaining huge quantities of information. She
filled Excel spread sheets with all that bank transaction
data for the years 2008 through 2012 to date, and with tax
return data for 2008, 2009 and 2010. Hee determined that
Mr. X’s true income warranted the increase in child support,
but realized that she would need an expert witness with a
thorough command of forensic accounting to make her case.
She turned to Deborah Johnson, the managing attorney
of Atlanta Legal Aid’s DeKalb Office. Deborah called on
Laurie Dyke, a partner in the Investigative Accounting Group
LLC, d/b/a IAG Forensics, with
whom she had served on a child
support commission. Laurie
brought Karen Fortune, another
IAG Forensics partner, into
the picture along with forensic
accountant Adrienne Kimball.
The comp