A Young Lawyer's Imagined Brush With Death

• Citation: Vol. 29 No. 2 Pg. 0042
• Publication year: 2023
• Pages: 0042
• Year: 2023

A Young Lawyer's Imagined Brush With Death Vol. 29 No. 2 Pg. 42 Georgia Bar Journal October 2023

GBJ | Feature

BY HON. ALBERT R. SACKS

As a senior judge (officially retired) with DeKalb County, I happily find myself with extra time to do with as I please. One of my many retirement goals is to organize the disorganized notes and general meanderings left in the "who knows where" places on my computer hard drives. Another of my retirement goals is to challenge my memory and record life events; the ones I deem worthy of memorializing. I thought of one memory worth sharing as much for its improbability as for its entertainment value.

Upon receiving my law school diploma in 1980, I found employment in Atlanta with Jim Jenkins, an all-around great guy and an extraordinary lawyer. He was a partner in a criminal defense firm with offices in Atlanta, San Antonio, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. The firm had an interesting specialty—the defense of those charged with the sale or possession of large quantities of marijuana. A typical case handled out of our Georgia office might involve a client charged with transporting hundreds of pounds of pot via airplane for delivery to some nondescript landing strip in central or south Georgia, or, if not by air, then by coastal delivery via shrimp boat or other maritime vessel. The criminal defense work was exciting and challenging, with dim prospects of victory if the case was tried before a small-town rural jury.

I had been at the firm for a few months when Jim was scheduled to appear in Florida...