Font Size: 
Appeals Court Layoffs Launch Solo Career
Fulton County Daily Report
October 02, 2008
Tuesday was the last day of work at the Georgia Court of Appeals for four attorneys and five staff members laid off as part of the state budget cuts. Each of the lawyers had worked at the court for 13 years or more.
One of them, M. Katherine Durant, hung out her own shingle Wednesday, while two others, Janice D. Ward and Deborah D. Wellborn, are considering their options. J. Clifford Head, the fourth lawyer, did not return a call by press time.
While she'd never planned to change jobs, said Durant, she'd "daydreamed for years that if I ever left the court I would start my own appellate practice boutique."
Now she is doing just that. "I've seen firsthand the myriad ways that lawyers can bungle an appeal," she said. "Trial lawyers without the time or inclination to learn how to do an appeal properly will need me to help them."
Durant said she is marketing her services statewide, advising lawyers on how to preserve their clients' appellate rights in the trial court and on filing a successful appeal. "I can help them save face with their client and their malpractice carrier," she said.
The four attorneys laid off from the court were central staff attorneys who worked for the entire court, not individual judges. They vetted all incoming appeals and appeal applications to ensure they were in the correct venue and reviewed applications for discretionary and interlocutory appeals.
The cuts leave the court with only two central staff attorneys. Each of the court's 12 judges has three staff attorneys. There also are three floating attorneys who fill in for the judges' attorneys.
The court's chief judge, Anne Elizabeth Barnes, said that more than 90 percent of the court's $14.9 million budget goes to salaries and benefits, leaving the court little choice but to cut staff to meet Georgia's mandate to reduce its budget by 6 percent.
"We have lost some efficiency," said Barnes. For instance, she said, preliminary jurisdictional reviews are still being done, but it is now just a "rough cut" screening, with some of the work being handled by nonlawyers.
The laid-off attorneys said reviewing applications for discretionary review and interlocutory appeals took up the bulk of their time, but agreed that jurisdictional review was often the knottiest area.
"Appellate jurisdiction is very esoteric," said Durant. "We had mastered it. We sweated every detail. Justice got done when we reviewed those applications."
Vetting jurisdiction is routine for most appeals, Ward explained, "but when it's not, it can be horrendously difficult and complex."
"Jurisdictional review issues are easy until they're hard. It takes a certain level of expertise to even see that they're hard," she said. Ward said the six central staff attorneys often worked as a team on cases with tricky jurisdictional issues. "We might split three to three on if it should get an appeal."
She said determining the correct venue for a case was a crucial part of their job, since otherwise an appeal could wend its way through several judges -- only to have it turn out that the case was not in the appropriate jurisdiction. "I felt we were an extremely cost-effective unit on the court," said Ward.
Durant spent 13 years as a staff attorney for the court -- two as an "elbow clerk" for Senior Judge Dorothy T. Beasley and the rest as a central staff attorney.
She started her legal career as a corporate attorney at Long Aldridge & Norman, then worked for Grenwald, Salo & Sheftall, a boutique firm that spun off from Hansell Post after the latter firm's implosion. She left private practice to join the Resolution Trust Corp. in 1993, where she assisted in the cleanup of holding companies established by the failed S&Ls for three years before joining the Court of Appeals.
Ward also worked at the court for about 13 years -- first as a staff attorney for Judge Harold R. Bankey Sr., then as a floating staff attorney and, for almost three years, as a central staff attorney. Law is a second career for Ward, who spent her 20s and 30s as a high school and college instructor, teaching political science and history.
Ward said she hopes to stay in the public sector, which could mean a district attorney's office, the attorney general's office, the prosecuting attorneys' council or another government law job where she can use her appellate expertise. "I've invested 13 1/2 years doing appellate work," she said.
Wellborn, the other central staff attorney out of a job, said she is considering both the government sector and private practice. She spent 13 years as a central staff attorney for the court and seven before that as an assistant regional counsel for the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Atlanta office.
