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Meredith Hobbs
Fulton County Daily Report
12-29-2006

Former defense attorney James M. Poe has joined Atlanta-based plaintiffs firm Warshauer Thornton & Easom as a name partner. The firm's new name, effective Jan. 1, is Warshauer Poe & Thornton, said the firm's managing partner, Michael J. Warshauer.

Poe is a former partner at defense firm Drew, Eckl & Farnham and started his own plaintiffs practice three years ago, said Warshauer.

The firm will also be moving its offices to a new space that includes a mock courtroom and a room for monitoring juror focus groups.

In another change, Warshauer said the firm's new business cards will identify its lawyers as "civil justice attorneys" instead of "trial lawyers," following the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's recent renaming as the American Association for Justice.

"Civil justice attorney better defines what we do. Our goal is not to get to trial. It is to obtain full, fair and just compensation for injured people and their families," said Warshauer, who added that if other plaintiffs lawyers followed suit, he thought it would make a difference in the public perception of the profession. He explained that in the past, when he's told people he's a trial lawyer, "they would step back and lean out of the conversation. The phrase has been stolen from lawyers. I'm not going to let them steal civil justice from us."

"I'm doing the same thing -- helping people who've been wronged. I'm not embarrassed to say I'm a trial lawyer. ... But we're not going to let giant insurance companies define what we do -- or the chamber of commerce -- as some sort of evil activity."