Editorial
Front Page - Friday, January 8, 2010
Attorney’s progression from trials to ADR increases perspective
Stephanie Coward
People change and grow throughout their lives, especially within their careers. Attorney Joe Manuel is no exception. He said he has evolved throughout his career from someone who “looked at everything like a nail because I only had a hammer … to a lawyer looking for a solution rather than one quick to draw the lawsuit thing.”
A man who once did mostly trial work, today Manuel focuses more on ADR with just a bit of trial work peppered in. “I’m still a civil trial lawyer, but I do an increasing amount of mediation and arbitration where I serve as a mediator or the arbitrator,” Manuel said. “I’ve been doing some of that for about 15 years or so and it’s grown into a larger part of my practice.” Manuel has been in solo practice since about 2000 he said. Prior to that, he worked for Leitner, Williams, Dooley and Napolitan.
“I chose to withdraw from the partnership in 1993 because I wanted to go more in a different direction,” Manuel said.
It was natural progression for Manuel from trial work to more mediation and arbitration. “I still do a fair amount (of trial work). None of the trial lawyers for the most part do as much actual courtroom work as we used to because things have changed,” Manuel said. “We do a lot more alternative dispute resolution processes now. I also do a lot more arbitration than I do true jury trial work anymore.”
When it comes to mediation and arbitration, Manuel literally wrote the book on the subject. In 1997 he published “Tennessee Alternative Dispute Handbook,” with Patricia Best Vital. “We decided to write it because we thought it was a timely subject and it’s still the only book in Tennessee on ADR,” he said. “If things go well, I plan to do another (ADR) book, probably in 2010.”
Along with writing a book on ADR, Manuel, to date, has created eight different CLE courses under the pseudonym, the ADR Professor. The courses can be taken through the Lawyers Learn Web site. “They are all blessed for CLE credit in Tennessee and actually other states,” Manuel said. He started writing the classes around 1999. “We started with one, and have come forward. Actually, the folks that run Lawyers Learn are always after me to write more, it’s just that it takes time to do them.” Though time consuming, Manuel hopes to write more courses in the future.
Health care is a much talked about issue currently and Manuel said that he spends a great part of his practice on those issues. “I represent defendants and I represent plaintiffs. One of the things that I think is nice, is I’ve been sort of all the way around the table. I’m in mediations representing a party, I’m in mediations as a mediator, I’m in arbitrations
representing a party, and I’m in arbitrations serving as the
arbitrator,” Manuel said. “All of those things I think help me understand the various roles and help me do a better job for clients.”
Though he fully enjoys his private practice, Manuel said that he enjoyed working with a larger firm as well and his career experiences have helped shaped his perspective. “Sometimes, one of the things about being in a smaller practice setting or solo, you see things that you don’t tend to see or you don’t appre-ciate as much in larger firm,” Manuel said. “People tend to look at things though, where they see it.”
Manuel obtained his law degree from UT and immediately went to work for the Leitner firm. He wanted to get into the courtroom as quickly as possible. “Some firms don’t do much trial work and at that time, one of the places you could get civil trial experience quicker than most other places was either with a plaintiff’s civil litigation firm or ..., what we used to call sort of a defense or insurance defense firm,” Manuel said.
It was also with the Leitner firm that Manuel took and passed the Georgia Bar exam. “I was the Leitner firm’s first experiment with lawyers coming to them who were not already licensed in Georgia.” Before then, most attorneys weren’t licensed for both states, and those that were tended to be older and received their Georgia licensure by the concept of
reciprocity, Manuel said.
When he isn’t busy helping to resolve disputes, Manuel can be found with his wife Emmaly on the golf course, watching their two youngest children – Wil, a seventh grader at Baylor and Mary Melissa, a sixth grader at GPS – sail through the greens. “My son is a pretty good junior golfer and I think Mary Melissa might be too,” Manuel said. His oldest daughter, Meredith, is a junior at Auburn and never really developed an interest in golf, he said.
Manuel can be contacted through his Web site at www.joemanuel.com and his CLE courses can be found through the Lawyers Learn
Web site at www.lawyerslearn
.com.
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