Super Lawyers - Georgia 2016

I’m torn between A Few Good Men and A Time to Kill.

Those are two of my all-time favorites.

Anytime they’re on, I’m glued to the television. It’s because of the advocacy that both Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey portray in defending their clients. It’s inspirational to any person who wants to pursue a law career. It’s what practicing law is really about: the difficulties of the situations you might face, and how you might have to really dig deep to advocate for your client.

And don’t forget about Demi Moore;
I have to give a shout out to the women
attorneys as well.
JANET C. SCOTT / ASSOCIATE, SMITH
WELCH WEBB & WHITE; MCDONOUGH;
SCHOOLS & EDUCATION
Woman in Gold.

My favorite used to be A Time to Kill, but then I was thinking about [a movie] I’d watch again and again—and not just the last scene where Matthew McConaughey says, “Close your eyes” and drops that bomb.

I saw Woman in Gold several months ago and it became my new favorite. It’s based on things that happened in real life, has a wonderful combination of history and culture, and shows how legal persistence can pay off. Several times in the movie, the client says, “We’re done, give up,” and the attorney says, “There’s got to be some way; this is an incredible injustice.” And they keep pursuing little loopholes and going into archives looking for the one piece of information that’s missing.

It’s a great testament to never giving up.
LAURA BENZ / LAURA W. BENZ, LLC;
PEACHTREE CITY; ENERGY & NATURAL
RESOURCES
My Cousin Vinny.

It’s a classic story of a lawyer who is ill-prepared and has to trudge through it and learn on the fly. Vinny frankly doesn’t know anything about criminal law, and is thrust into a system he doesn’t understand.

But he doesn’t give up; and at the end of
the day he prevails, as much as anything
because of his tenacity.

Probably my favorite scene is when he asks an older lady to testify about what she saw, he pulls out the measuring tape and goes to the back of the courtroom and she can’t see him. The other fact witnesses are just as funny. He cross-examines one witness about how long it takes to cook grits. He didn’t even know what grits were when he started, but by the end he knew exactly how long it took to cook grits.