🎙 Episode #051: Chief Justice Harold Melton (Former Chief Justice of Georgia Supreme Court and Litigation Partner at Troutman Pepper)
👋🏻 Greetings from freezing Washington, D.C. and a belated Happy New Year!
After a restorative January (OK, maybe restorative is too strong), the How I Lawyer Podcast is back for year #2 with new informative interviews with lawyers from across the profession about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it well.
Year #1 was more successful than I could have dreamed: 50 episodes, almost 49,500 downloads, and countless new colleagues/connections/friends. Just this week, the podcast was used in law school classrooms across the country, found in cover letters in more than one industry, and helped junior lawyers not just across the United States but also in far off place like the UK & Morocco.
And most of this success is thanks to you! Thank you for listening. They you for sharing. Thank you for reviewing the podcast on iTunes and other platforms. It really does make a difference.
If you are a regular listener, you’ll see a few new things around these parts. First, I am excited to have updated my podcast cover art to something a bit more professional (even though I’ll always think of the scales+smile fondly). Second, you’ll hear a more professional sounding edit thanks to our new (amazing) sponsor LawPods who is providing editing and engineering services for the podcast.
But I am not stopping there.
I have ambitious (some might say “unreasonable”) dreams for How I Lawyer and this is just the start. As always if YOU have ideas, just send me an e-mail at howilawyer@gmail.com.
With that I am excited to share this week’s episode with Chief Justice Harold Melton who is the Former Chief Justice of the Georgia State Supreme Court and a current partner at Troutman Pepper based in Atlanta where his practice focuses on complex litigation matters. Prior to serving on the bench for sixteen years, Justice Melton served as executive counsel to Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue and in the Attorney General’s Office for the State of Georgia where he worked on issues related to consumer protection, tax, the Georgia Tobacco Settlement, and the creation of the Georgia Lottery Corporation.
He is a proud graduate of Auburn University where he was the first African-American student government president and where the student center is named after him. He is also a graduate of Georgia Law School .
In our conversation we discuss his path to law school and the law; how he found himself nominated to the Georgia State Supreme Court at a young age; how he and his colleagues reached decisions on cases presented to them; and what he has taken with him from his time as a Justice to his new role as a Partner at Troutman Pepper in Atlanta.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for the podcast you can just respond to this e-mail. And if you liked the episode and can share the podcast with a family/friend/colleague and/or leave a review on iTunes I’d appreciate it.
See you next week,
Jonah