About Jerry Grillo
Jerry Grillo is an award-winning journalist who has written for Newsday, ESPN, Golf Magazine and Atlanta magazine, among others. For 14 years, he was senior and executive editor at Georgia Trend, where he helped transform the magazine into a leading business resource. His book, The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton: A Basically True Biography, was published in April 2021 by the University of Georgia Press. A biography of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Johnny Mize is slated for publication by University of Nebraska Press in 2024.
Articles written by Jerry Grillo
Helping Juries See the Why
Katherine L. McArthur laser-focuses on the facts of the caseKatherine McArthur has spent much of her 44-year legal career running from failure. And that has made all the difference. “When I get into a case, I never set out thinking, ‘I’m the badass lawyer and I’m going to kick the other side’s rear,’” says McArthur, founder and owner of the McArthur Law Firm in Macon and Atlanta. “I’m more likely to think, ‘How am I going to lose this case?’ Because I’m always running from failure. That’s what keeps me on my toes. I can’t …
A Philosopher and a Warrior
Richard Jaffe keeps people from being executed by the stateRichard Jaffe was working at his father’s auto-parts store in Birmingham, Alabama, on a Sunday morning in 1972 when he saw something that would help make him one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the country. It was the look on his father’s face as Herman Jaffe was hauled away by sheriff’s deputies. Herman Jaffe's auto parts store open on Sundays in defiance of the region’s blue laws. Jaffe’s Auto Parts served a mostly African-American clientele in a neighborhood where the …
Back to the Center
Hannibal Heredia is the family law attorney who’s meticulous, well-prepared, and ready to rockFor a long time, whenever Hannibal Heredia introduced himself, he’d invariably get some variation on this response: “So … did you eat his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?” Heredia would smile and nod, getting the joke for the umpteenth time. Except, initially, he didn’t really get the joke. Yes, he knew about The Silence of the Lambs, but he hadn’t seen it yet, and he knew nothing of Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Heredia was too busy with college, then law school, and his music …
Super Fascinating Lawyers
Our profiler in residence on the people he’s metThere are tons of lawyer jokes out there, and this is one of them: What’s the difference between an accountant and a lawyer? Accountants know they’re boring. Seventeen years ago, that joke almost made me turn down the chance to write for this publication. Writing about lawyers? It sounded rather dull. However, loving a good challenge, and needing a paycheck, I took the gig. Then I kept returning, year after year. And I haven’t met a boring lawyer yet. My first feature was on a Holland …
Poll Position
What Iván Resendiz Gutierrez did during the 2020 electionIván Resendiz Gutierrez could see that the man was agitated and maybe looking for trouble. It was election day 2020 and the polls were minutes away from closing in Las Vegas, where Gutierrez was volunteering as a poll watcher. Nevada was considered a battleground state, which is why Gutierrez wanted to be there. “We thought that if there were going to be any shenanigans, any chance of someone trying to prevent someone else from voting, it would be one of those [battleground] states,” says …
'They All Started Calling'
L. Chris Stewart never anticipated being a civil rights lawyer; now he’s a face of the movementIf you ask L. Chris Stewart how he became one of the nation’s most renowned civil rights attorneys, he says, “That’s a question I ask myself daily, because I really have no clue.” Turns out it began with a phone call from a heartbroken mother in 2014. “She told me her son had been killed by the police and no one would believe her,” says Stewart, CEO of Stewart Miller Simmons Trial Attorneys, the Atlanta firm he launched in 2020. “The truth is, I didn’t want to take the case.” …
Mister Legal Scholar
Don Samuel is the ‘walking legal encyclopedia’ whose cases make headlinesDon Samuel’s long career in criminal defense was launched with a phone call at 11 o’clock one evening in the fall of 1982. It was his managing partner, Ed Garland. “He said some woman had killed her husband down in Griffin and to get down there and not come back until the case was ready for trial,” recalls Samuel, 67, who had joined the Atlanta firm, now called Garland, Samuel & Loeb, on Memorial Day that year, and had, up until then, planned to work in labor law …
What Should Companies Do to Prevent Cyberattacks?
Insights from Atlanta-based attorneys on addressing cyber risksWhen it comes to cybercrime, Atlanta has been a veritable Gotham City—with nary a Batman in sight. Atlanta has seen: A Home Depot data breach in 2014 that affected more than 50 million cardholders; Repeated cyber-attacks on defense contractor Lockheed Martin (foreign espionage is suspected); A data breach at credit-reporting giant Equifax that affected almost 150 million; A 2015 apology from then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp after his office released the personal information of 6 million …
The Legal Advantages and Disadvantages of Managing a Remote Workforce
Welcome to the Brave New WorkplaceJames Giszczak and his colleagues in data privacy and cybersecurity have a name for a frequent type of breach they handle on behalf of businesses: “coffeehouse cases.” “It’s something we’ve run into with remote-employee situations,” says Giszczak, co-chair of the data privacy and cybersecurity group at McDonald Hopkins in Detroit. “The employee decides to do some work at the coffeehouse. You know: You place your order, you sit down, flip open the laptop, log in. It might be an …
‘We Don’t Let Girl Lawyers Practice Up Here’
An oral history of women who persevered against sexism and discrimination to remake the legal professionIt wasn’t easy. The women in this feature entered the male-dominated legal profession in the 1970s and began changing its demographics. Here are some of the things they heard along the way: “Are you here to find a husband?” “We don’t let girl lawyers practice up here.” “Oh, you’re just a woman.” But there was also this: “You can make it, you can make it.” “These women blazed a trail, facing challenges I can’t imagine dealing …
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