Attorney
Atlanta, Georgia, 30324
Being a lawyer isn’t about flash and glory. Winning a case for your client takes work, focus, and discipline. The made-for-TV moments are few and far between. Winning your client’s case means doing the little things right, from the first time you shake your client’s hand until you hand them a check. Winning doesn’t depend on a single moment of creative brilliance – it isn’t that easy. Winning means grinding it out.
Winning means digging deep into the facts before the case is filed, pressing the defense to turn over the evidence, crafting unanswerable deposition questions, revising your briefs until they are perfect, and obsessively preparing for trial. Winning also requires confidence and execution, but there are many lawyers who can do that. What sets Jeb and our firm apart is what nobody ever sees. It’s the unglamorous grunt work.
It’s reviewing hundreds of thousands of documents to find the one smoking gun. It’s the little things that we do over the months and years that a case is pending. As Jeb’s father has long said, you build a case like you build a house – one brick at a time. It’s not about flash and glory. Jeb likes being a lawyer. That isn’t true of all lawyers – there are many who would rather be doing something else. But you can’t work as hard as Jeb does or build a firm like this one unless you like what you’re doing. Jeb likes helping people. He likes the intellectual challenges that practicing law brings. But if you ask him, he’ll usually admit that even more than that, he likes beating adversaries who deserve to be beaten and winning cases that bring about change. Jeb says that he has been lucky to work on several cases that have made systemic changes. He was part of the trial team that won a $150,000,000 verdict in a product liability case after Chrysler put the gas tanks in certain Jeeps right next to the rear bumper – which no manufacturer does anymore. He handled a police chase case that resulted in policy changes to better protect innocent lives. He has worked on cases involving a hospital chain that regularly falsified its medical records to get more money from Medicare and he won a $500,000 verdict on behalf of a woman who had been sexually abused by her pastor for nearly a decade and whom the pastor had publicly accused of lying. Other case results that can be publicly disclosed include a $3,973,260 settlement after a boating accident and a $1,250,000 settlement in a pedestrian case. Cases like that can make a difference not only for our clients, but for others who walk in similar shoes. Jeb has been working hard since he entered this profession. At the University of Georgia School of Law he graduated in the top 10% of his class, published on the Law Review, and argued in the National Moot Court competition. He earned the Order of the Coif and the Order of the Barristers, won a trial for an indigent defendant under the Third Year Practice Act, and had summer clerkships with Bondurant Mixson & Elmore and Troutman Sanders. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Lisa Godbey Wood in the Southern District of Georgia for a year, then went to the Clayton County District Attorney’s Office where he learned to try cases. Then he worked at his father’s firm, then called Butler Wooten & Fryhofer, for three and a half years before leaving to start his own firm.
Now, Jeb works hard for this firm’s clients and, whenever possible, collaborates with other lawyers to achieve exceptional results for great people. Of course it isn’t all work. Jeb is the proud husband of Anne Wyrsch Butler and the proud father of Farrah Anne Butler (“Little Bomber”) and James Edward Butler IV (“Jim”). He would be quick to tell you that he was the primary trainer for Lou, the finest black lab in the state of Georgia, who not only retrieves tennis balls herself but has taught Farrah and Jim how to do it. Jeb likes hiking, traveling, and tending to his family’s flock of backyard chickens.
Long ago, when he had time to do it, Jeb enjoyed hunting, fishing, and flying airplanes. Jeb also claims that from 2006-2008, he was the best wiffleball pitcher in Athens, Georgia and that he can still summon sparks of former glory when called upon.
