On July 22, local solo practitioner Wesley Woolf and Matthew Billips, of four-lawyer Atlanta employment litigation shop Billips & Benjamin, ducked out of the 90-degree heat in downtown Savannah and into the cool of a two-story law office across one of the city's iconic squares from the federal courthouse. The 49-year-old Billips, with a shaved head and an intense gaze, and the taller Woolf, 54, with thinning sandy hair, were headed to their first meeting with newly hired lawyers on the other side of the most notorious case either had ever taken on. For the moment, at least, they seemed to be in command.
Woolf and Billips represent Lisa Jackson, a former manager at Uncle Bubba's Seafood and Oyster House, a Savannah-area eatery co-owned by celebrity cook Paula Deen and her brother, Earl "Bubba" Hiers. More than a year earlier, in March 2012, Jackson, a white woman, had sued Deen, Hiers and their companies for racial and sexual harassment.
