Judges, particularly appellate judges, don’t get much public interaction in their jobs. So, judges are learning to use social media to connect with and educate the public about their roles. Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Dillard has helped blaze that trail, adopting the mantra that, “If you’re a judge and you’re not on social media, that’s political malpractice.” In this week’s episode, Judge Dillard explains why it’s crucial for judges to be actively engaged on social media or to use those platforms to help understand issues that might come before them. He also talks about how judges can balance their ethical duties with public engagement. Join us as we explore how judges (and lawyers) can learn from and engage in these communication channels.
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Our guest is not a Texas judge, but he’s a Judge that I bet many of our readers have heard of. It’s Judge Stephen Dillard of the Georgia Court of Appeals. Judge Dillard, thanks so much for joining us.
It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
I know that a lot of our readers probably know of you through social media, particularly Twitter, but they may not know a whole lot about you. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up where you are today?
I was born in Nashville, Tennessee. My mother, Peggy Dillard, who is still with us, was a social worker with Nashville, Davidson County Metro schools for her entire career. My father, who passed away when I was sixteen, was a professor at the University of Alabama. He taught students how to work with special needs children. Most of my family were educators. My grandfather was the Founding Headmaster of Indian Springs School just outside of Birmingham, Alabama. I came from a family of educators. I was the first lawyer in my family. I don’t refer to myself as first-gen. This is always a debate on Twitter. I have too many PhDs with my dad and my grandfather. I don’t feel first-gen but I was the first lawyer in my family.
We had some doctors as well. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. I graduated from Hillwood High School, a public school there in Nashville, then went to Samford University, which many people who follow me on Twitter know of my love for my undergraduate alma mater. I spent a wonderful four years there. I met my bride, Krista McDaniel, now obviously a Dillard for many years. I spoke to a lot of lawyers and got good advice to take a year off between college and law school and did some retail. I worked at Dillard’s in the Polo department selling Ralph Lauren.
No relation?
No relation, although I did meet some of the Dillards from Little Rock. They were like, “We had to hire you.” I was at the Banana Republic for a little bit and I did admissions at Mercer. I was an Admissions Officer at Mercer University. My wife was from Macon. I came here and this was before we were married. I did that for less than a year. I won’t get through the convoluted story but then I ended up at Mississippi College in Jackson. I used to be a Baptist, so it was two Baptist schools. I had a great three years in Jackson, Mississippi. I enjoyed my time at MC. I had some wonderful professors and great classmates. When I graduated, I went to Macon, Georgia where my wife was from, I was at a law firm called Stone & Baxter for about five years doing business litigation and a little bit of appellate work.
Without getting into too much of the backstory, I had an opportunity out of law school to clerk for the Supreme Court of Mississippi but my wife wanted to come home. As we say in the South, “If mama ain’t happy, nobody is happy.” I couldn’t shake the desire to do a clerkship. Through a series of events that I won’t go into, I ended up applying to Judge Daniel A. Manion who is a Circuit Court Judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He was based in South Bend. The Court is in Chicago. I left private practice right before I was getting ready to make partner, which many people thought I was crazy to do that. I ended up doing the clerkship for two years and it was two of the best years of my life. Clerking for Judge Manion was amazing.
I then came back to Macon. I joined the law firm of James Bates Pope & Spivey. I started up their appellate practice group. On November 1, 2010, I was appointed by Governor Sonny Perdue, who just finished up a term as the Agricultural Secretary in the Trump administration. I ran for election for the first time in 2012 for a six-year term and then ran again in 2018. Since then, I have served in a lot of capacities at the Court of Appeals including Chief Judge. I’m now Presiding Judge. I hit my ten-year mark. I had a lot of great mentors along the way. I wouldn’t be where I am without those folks. I tell people, “When you become a judge, it’s part merit, politics, luck and timing.” I was pretty blessed. I have had good timing in my life.
We have an ongoing conversation on this show about judicial selection. How does the process work in Georgia?
We, in Georgia, decided that we want to elect our judges but as you know, you have vacancies that happen. When that happens, the governor gets to appoint starting with then-Governor Jimmy Carter, who went on to be President as everyone knows. He created something called the Judicial Nominating Commission. Unlike other states, it is not part of the Constitution and is purely executive order. The governor selects the folks on there. That has been used since the Carter administration. In Georgia, a group is vetting potential nominees for the governor. The governor doesn’t have to choose from that list. The governor can disregard it but 9.999 times out of 10, the governor goes with that list because he appointed these folks and he trusts those folks to pick good people.
In 2009, then-Justice Leah Ward Sears, quite well-known, stepped down from the Supreme Court. I was asked by some folks to put in. I was pretty young at the time. I was 39 back then. I went through that process. I got on the shortlist with eight other people. Justice Nahmias, who is currently on the Supreme Court of Georgia, was selected for that. As a consolation prize, I was put on the Judicial Nominating Commission. I did that for about 1.5 years. That was a lot of fun. About 8 or 9 months later, so much time went by between the time I went through that process, there was a vacancy on the Court of Appeals and then another vacancy. I didn’t go back through the process because the governor decided he wanted to use the old Supreme Court list because it had been right at a year.
They called those of us that were still in there and said, “Are you interested in the Court of Appeals?” I was like, “Yes.” They opened up another slot and then I was appointed along with my friend who now has retired, Justice Keith Blackwell, then-Judge Keith Blackwell, who was on the shortlist for President Trump for the Supreme Court of the United States. He was a talented jurist and a good friend of mine but now he’s back in private practice at Alston & Bird. You go through this judicial nominating process, there is a shortlist that goes to the governor, the governor then interviews those folks and then appoints, and then you have to run in the next general election. That’s the way it works. I was appointed in November 2010 and then I had to run in the next general election. I was appointed the day before the general election in 2010. I wasn’t up until 2012. I have been through two elections now, unopposed both times. I’m grateful for the people of Georgia reelecting me.
There is a lot of debate about judicial elections and appointments. The good thing in Georgia is we are non-partisan and I appreciate that, unlike some of our surrounding states like Texas. I don’t think any process is perfect. It’s a little naive to suggest that appointed processes aren’t political. They are. We’ve got an incredible bar in Georgia that is deeply committed to a non-partisan independent judiciary. The lawyers all across the spectrum are supportive of that. I’ve got supporters that are anywhere from the Green Party to hardcore Conservatives. I’m proud of that. I’m proud of the lawyers in Georgia for supporting me. The state’s changing. I suspect when it does change and there are different types of appointees that the bar will continue to support those folks and they should. This goes in cycles and that’s the way it works. I’m proud of the process we have in Georgia. It’s not perfect but as far as elected judiciaries go, it’s a hybrid appointment/elected. People get to have their say. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
You mentioned having been Chief Justice and now being Presiding Justice. Can you tell us a little bit about the distinction? We don’t have that here. We have a chief justice who is elected into that position and sits out a term in that position. How did that come about?
As with other intermediate appellate courts, we operate in three divisions. The Chief Administrative Officer for the court does day-to-day decisions and consults with the bank when appropriate. Presiding judges are those that presided oral argument for each of the five divisions. The chief traditionally does not preside. I did preside when I was Chief because we had had so much turnover that I was on a panel with judges that had both of whom had been there for right at a year or less than a year. We thought that would be weird. The chief can preside but traditionally, he or she does not preside. The way it works is you preside at oral argument. You were the first to see the cases from the other judges on the panel.
If the three of us were on a panel and I’m the presiding judge, Todd, you would be sending me your opinion first and then I would sign off on it and send it to Jody. The idea is that you have more experienced judges who are looking at the cases first. In addition to that, if there’s a conference, ours tend to be a little less formal but I will sometimes lead the discussion, I will schedule the oral arguments. It’s not a ton of work. Probably the most taxing aspect of it is being the first one constantly to review the opinions. Not that you don’t trust your folks down the line but you fill a special obligation to make sure that you are giving your colleagues’ opinions a hard look during that first review.
It sounds like your court system is set up a little bit differently. Here, we have geographic jurisdiction appellate courts that are independent entities. We have fourteen of them. Yours is a statewide appellate court but then it’s divided into geographic divisions that sit in their own three-judge panels.
We have no geographic divisions. We are unique in that. People talk about weak and strong mayoral systems. We are a strong intermediate appellate court. We are unified in geography. I am on the ballot statewide, I am just as much of a judge from somebody in Blue Ridge in North Georgia to Bainbridge down in South Georgia, or Macon, where I live, in Central Georgia. We don’t have districts at all. We are based in Atlanta. We do some off-site oral arguments across the state but in addition to that, we are unlike Alabama, for example, they’ve got subject matter intermediate appellate courts. We’ve got a civil intermediate appellate court and a criminal intermediate appellate court, which I love because even though I come from a civil background, I enjoy criminal cases.
I shouldn’t say I enjoy them. I find them intellectually stimulating, especially Fourth Amendment issues. In 2015, 2016, we passed the Appellate Jurisdiction Reform Act. I was on the committee for that. We shifted categories of cases that, for some historically quirky reasons, bypassed us and went to the Supreme Court. We brought those down. These were things like mandamus and divorce cases. Can you imagine nine justices sitting around, debating? All of them decide those cases, they don’t sit in panels. You are talking about nine justices spending a bunch of time. Not that divorce cases aren’t important but that’s not what you want your highest court dealing with. That’s what we are built for.
We shifted these divorce, mandamus, the title of land cases, will contest and there were numerous categories of cases. We shifted those down to the Court of Appeals. We bulked up our Central Staff to help us with the applications. The Supreme Court of Georgia became more of a cert-based court but we now decide about 85% of all appeals so we are effectively the court of last resort in 85% of all appeals. It is a strong, important court.
Not that the Supreme Court’s not but a lot of times people get caught up in the names. On a day-to-day basis, the Court of Appeals in Georgia is going to have a lot more of an impact on the law, the number of cases, the same way with the trial courts. Even though we are one of the busier intermediate appellate courts in the country, we are only seeing a sliver of what happens at the trial level. I tell people all the time, “That’s where the power is, it’s at the trial level.” Those folks are having an enormous impact on the day-to-day lives, whether it’s juvenile court, probate court, superior court, state court, you name it.
That sounds fairly similar. Other than the unified structure in terms of the role of the courts to what we have here in Texas, you’ve got a first-level appeal as a matter of right, whether it’s civil or criminal. In our Supreme Court, we don’t use the cert terminology, maybe the Supreme Court of Georgia doesn’t either but that effectively winds up being how it is because they have completely discretionary jurisdiction. They pick and choose the cases to take to shape Texas Law the way that they feel like it should be. That’s interesting, that unified court with divisions.
You are separated too like on Supreme Courts. Our Supreme Court handles all of that. There are some cases that they have exclusive jurisdiction over that remained that jump us. They are the cases you would be like, “That makes sense.” Death penalty cases, habeas cases, constitutional challenges to ordinances or statutes, election contest. Those are the things that jump us. Those make sense. They have all murder, which is a little unusual. That’s based on an interpretation of our Constitution and some of the accompanying statutes. That is a huge portion of their docket. I’m wondering at some point, whether or not they are not going to want to shift that down to the Court of Appeals because a lot of murder, it’s a big deal in terms of the consequences on lives.
In terms of jurisprudence, a lot of murder cases are fairly routine in terms of deciding the cases. I don’t want to minimize murder cases but in terms of resolving those cases, by the time they get up to the appellate courts, not all of them, some of them are complex but many of those cases are fairly routine and could be done by the intermediate appellate court. I’m not asking for them. It’s a lot of cases. You probably would have to give us another three-judge panel or significantly bulk up our Central Staff for us to be able to take that on. It’s about 60% of what the Supreme Court of Georgia does. It is a significant amount. It’s much more than the cert. The certs are a small portion of what they do and then they also do discipline and some of the policy committees.
I’ve got the better of the job. On a day-to-day basis, I get to handle some cool cases. I had one royalty dispute involving the Zac Brown Band. About six months into my job, I found out that I had been assigned the Richard Jewell where his estate was suing The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. After fifteen years of litigation all stemming out of that Olympic bombing case, I was the last case, the last opinion. It started when I got out of law school and it ended when I was about a year on the bench.
I have had cases involving rappers like T.I., Akon and Waka Flocka. We’ve got a big hip-hop community. A lot of those are business disputes. Some of them involve other things. We’ve got a wide range of interesting civil cases and criminal cases. We get some complex issues of first impression. I have been in the Federal courts. I know how much of it’s routine. They get a lot of cool cases too but sometimes people don’t realize that state courts get a lot of interesting issues and difficult and complex issues.
There are a whole lot more lawsuits brought in state court than the Federal court. Tell us a little bit about the state of the appellate bar in Georgia. We have a well-recognized appellate group of practitioners in Texas. I don’t know much about the appellate bar in Georgia. Do you think it’s similar?
It’s hard to judge or compare. It seems to me, based on what I see on Twitter, that Texas might be a little more organized and obviously, it’s larger. We’ve got some amazing appellate practitioners in Georgia. I’ve been a member of the appellate practice section of the bar for quite some time. The thing that I like is that a lot of our leaders that are part of the appellate practice section for the Georgia bar are from the criminal defense side. They were former public defenders who have opened up their own shops. There is nothing wrong with being a big firm guy.
I was a big firm guy. It’s nice that it’s a fairly diverse group of practitioners from civil and criminal. We’ve got some prosecutors that are involved. More district attorney offices are getting someone who was in charge of appellate litigation appeals for that office. A few years back, I, behind the scenes, was helped out in starting the Solicitor General’s office in Georgia. That was something I championed for a long time. They got a lot of pushback. I’m not sure everyone at the Attorney General’s office, the line attorneys, still love it. All you have to do is look at the other states and how successful the SG offices have been.
Justice Nels Peterson on the Supreme Court of Georgia was the first Solicitor General. Britt Grant, who’s now on the Eleventh Circuit, was the second Solicitor General. Sarah Warren, who was the third Solicitor General, is now on the Georgia Supreme Court. It also served as a place to nurture talent for the judiciary. I wish the job had been around before. I did have some selfish motives in wanting to start the office but it’s an important office. That is, to me, one of the coolest appellate jobs in Georgia now. Andrew Pinson is our current SG. I’m confident, down the road, he is going to be wearing a black robe. He’s a bright young man. He’s going to do well in his career.
Does your court do law clerks to take on young lawyers?
We have permanent staff attorneys. I have three. Two of my three have been with me the entire time and one of the three has been with me for several years. I had one that started with me, ended up going part-time. She went somewhere else in the court. I’m not big on having part-time employees. It works for some chambers. It didn’t work for me. Even though I hated to lose that person, I ended up getting a great staff attorney. The Supreme Court has two permanent staff attorneys and now they have a term clerk. I’m hoping at some point we will get a term clerk as well. We have had some weird budget issues over the past couple of years. The political environment for asking for additional help has not been there.
We do have a lot of lawyers in the legislature, so they know the value of having term clerks, people who come in and then go out. That is one of the reasons why our state courts are a little more shrouded in mystery because unlike the Federal courts, we don’t have people constantly churning out. As busy as we have been, it’s hard to have term clerks. I know the Federal Circuit Courts are busy too but they also have an army of Central Staff Attorneys. We don’t have that. We have a smaller Central Staff.
At least at the Seventh Circuit when I was there, most of the routine cases went through Central Staff. A lot of them were disposed of without oral argument. In terms of the big work, it seems like it was a smaller sliver than what we have to deal with daily at the Court of Appeals. Until we expanded from 12 to 15 in the last few years, if we weren’t the busiest appellate court in the country, we were pretty close. To give you a quick comparison, the Supreme Court of the United States does maybe 79, 80 cases a year divided by nine people. I have three terms a year. On the low end, I get maybe 40 opinions that I have to author.
If it’s a slow year, which doesn’t happen much, it would be about 120 opinions that I have to author for the entire year and then I’ve got to review 120 each from my team panel. That doesn’t include motions, discretionary applications and interlocutory applications. It’s a busy court. Not only do our staff attorneys have to be smart but they also have to be fast. There are people out of law school that can do that but it’s tough to find them. Our tradition has been to try to hire people somewhere between 3 to 5 years or more experience.
How has your court coped with COVID and everything? Did you all go remote for oral arguments and submissions?
We did. I shut down my chambers about two weeks before. I knew it was coming. I said, “We can do our jobs from home.” The nice thing is we’ve got a great clerk’s office, our Clerk, Steve Castlen, and our technology folks and everybody. We already give our folks some flexibility in terms of work-life. One of the ways we recruit lawyers is we say things like, “You can come into the office three times a week, rather than five. You can work from home two days a week.” We had already been working on remote things and being able to circulate cases remotely. The only thing that we had to get up to speed on was Zoom.
We canceled oral arguments in March 2020 and then maybe April then starting in May. It took us a little time to get up to speed on Zoom and to work out all the bugs. We did that and we have been doing that. We have had Zoom oral arguments now ever since. This happened in March of 2020. We had our new courthouse in January of 2020. We only had two months of oral arguments in this gorgeous $140 million building. I know the lawyers are interested in getting in there. The courtrooms are massive.
You can space out and socially distance. We’ve got to be sensitive. We’ve got to figure out when the lawyers are comfortable, when we are comfortable. I’m hoping that would be sooner rather than later. This isn’t a done deal yet, but I hope we do keep some elements of allowing Zoom oral arguments in cases for budgetary reasons. You’ve got a public defender at a DA down in South Georgia. Their budget doesn’t have the money or it’s going to put a strain on their budget for them to come up to Atlanta, get hotel rooms. We are going to try to work something. There is a silver lining.
My friend, Chief Justice Bridget McCormack, says this a lot. “If there is a silver lining from the pandemic, it’s going to cause a lot of inefficiencies in the way we practice law to disappear hopefully.” Meeting in person is still important. Being able to see the reactions of the judges live, I don’t know that you can completely replace, not at the trial level. At the appellate level, it’s a little bit easier. Even great lawyers and great judges on Zoom, it’s still challenging. I hope that we strike the right balance moving forward once we resume and return to some sense of normalcy.
One of the themes that we have heard a lot of times talking to judges since the pandemic started is what you touched on. There is huge access to justice benefit that comes from keeping remote proceedings in some form because there are so many cases and areas of the law that it can get people able to get a lawyer to get into the courtroom and do all that without the unnecessary expense. We are hoping Texas does the same thing where we can find some balance to strike that keeps availability and convenience in the background for Zoom but it doesn’t replace everything completely.
I don’t know what it’s like in Texas. In the mid to late ‘90s, even for longer than that, when I was practicing, we had calendar calls. If I’m in a Macon-Bibb and I have a case down in Ware County, I would have to drive all the way to Ware County. I’m sitting, waiting around, hearing the calendar and it finally gets to me, I stand up and I get maybe 30 seconds to a minute with the judge and then I sit down or ask if I can leave. Even in Macon, when we would do it at the counter call Macon, you would be there 2 to 2.5 hours. That’s ridiculous. At the time it didn’t bother me because I didn’t know any other way, but looking back on it, that’s not right. There is no reason why we can’t do that either through some electronic submissions or through Zoom if you want to see the lawyer.
I know there is a value in that trial judge being able to look at a lawyer and say, “Why are you not ready to go?” They manage their dockets. There is no reason why that can’t be done through Zoom or some other. The judge will benefit from it as well. I hope the one thing that comes out of this is that we do fix some of these inefficiencies and we create a system where there is far greater access to justice. The cost is going to go down. You can’t blame lawyers for trying to recoup their time. That’s all we have. Hopefully, if these inefficiencies go away, then lawyers will have more time. They won’t be wasting time doing certain things and they will be able to do more things pro bono or charge far less.
That would be a great outcome to this challenging time, is that we are able to build on the efficiencies that we have come to know being online. To the extent, there were judges and court leaders who were skeptical about the way that technology could be applied and how change is hard. We were forced into it. Surely some eyes have been opened along the way and people who influence these processes and can help implement these tools permanently.
Lawyers and judges are loath to change. We had a judge who has since passed away on my court. Whenever we updated our computers they would bring a new computer to his office, he never used it. They printed out his emails. He did everything by hand. I love that judge. He was a great friend of mine. One of the reasons I am on different social media platforms is I want to understand the world in which I operate. Chief Justice McCormack and I point this out in our article that we wrote called The Robed Tweeter. We give advice and talk about the pitfalls of judges being on social media. One of the benefits of it is that judges, you watch some of these oral arguments reporting on states and you were like, “Do these folks live in the real world?” I have great respect for them but they were struggling to understand basic forms of technology. Judges need to know those things. To me, it’s a competency issue.
I’m not saying you’ve got to be on Facebook actively and posting memes but you probably ought to understand how Facebook generally works because people communicate in vastly different ways than they used to. I give this example all the time. My daughters communicate with their friends through Snapchat. They don’t even do texting. They do this thing where they take photos of themselves with their hair or they were posing and do messages. That’s how they communicate. They communicate in the comment threads on Instagram. They don’t talk on the phone that much anymore.
If you don’t understand these dynamics and the different personalities of social media platforms, there are going to be cases that come before you that are going to turn on these things. I don’t think you have to be active lurking on this but I do think it makes sense. For example, Justice Kagan I hear is an active lurker on Twitter. In addition to hoping that she follows me, I hope that she is on there a decent amount to the extent that she understands the forum. How we communicate matters. It doesn’t mean that the old things have gone away.
It doesn’t mean that there are still no value in going to a Civic Club or speaking to a group or doing all those things that we used to do. I quote my good friend, now Judge Willett, from a few years ago when he said, “If you are a judge and you are not on social media, that’s political malpractice.” We are down-ballot folks. There is no more effective way to communicate or create your brand even if that brand is loving Radiohead, Samford University and WordPerfect, that’s who I am. For better or for worse, people like to know the people that are serving them. It’s a good thing for judges to be actively engaged on social media but if you are not going to be, you ought to at least be lurking so that you can understand the platforms. That’s crucial.
From the public side, it provides some insight into something that people usually won’t see because to your point, the extent to which the public has any interaction with the legal system. It’s almost always at the trial court because so few cases get appealed. I would imagine that 99 out of 100 people that you polled on the street in Atlanta have no idea what the Georgia Court of Appeals does on a day-to-day basis.
What’s the old quote from Mission Impossible? “Anonymity is like a warm blanket.” There is something nice about being able to go out in public. The only thing that gets weird is when you see a lawyer because they know who you are. You have things in common. They will say, “Judge,” and then everybody turns around. That even happens to me in Macon. People know me more from my time as a lawyer in Macon. They were like, “You still live here.” I’m like, “I still live in Macon.”
You talked about social media. I’m glad this is something we wanted to cover. What are things that judges need to think about before venturing out on social media or when they are out there? I know this is something that you talk and think a lot about.
You have to ask yourself, “What is your goal? Why are you on social media?” Every judge probably should be on social media to some extent or another. For me, it was a matter of having a different viewpoint on how judges should engage with the people they serve. When I was a young lawyer, all the judges had gray hair. They were all men and white for the most part. You maybe saw them at a bar event or a civic event and maybe you got to shake their hand and speak to them for a minute but they were up here and the rest of us were down here. That always bothered me a little bit because my mom raised me to believe in public service.
To me, being a servant means being accessible to the people that you serve. I decided that when I became a judge, I was going to do things differently. One of the reasons you don’t see me wearing a tie except on the bench is that even small things like that, this is more accessible. I try to be more accessible. The best way I can do that is to do that through social media. There is a certain Jeffersonian purity to it, the idea that anybody can follow me. I don’t block folks. I may have blocked somebody that wasn’t from Georgia who was being abusive and then I ended up unblocking them. I don’t believe in blocking anybody from my state that votes for me.
I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want to do it. If somebody wants to vent, let them vent. Me being accessible to the people of Georgia and to other people, that’s the thing that surprised me, my following now has gone far beyond Georgia and even beyond the United States. I have followers from all over the world. I was asked to do a United Nations podcast video seminar with my friend, Bridget McCormack. She and I did one together. I’ve got followers from Africa, England, France, you name it. That was humbling. With that, comes a lot of responsibility to represent my state, my country and my profession and the judiciary well.
What I would say to judges is the biggest thing to me is to be authentic. Be who you are. If you are a nerd, be a nerd, that’s okay. As far as humor, you’ve got to watch that probably less so than you do on opinions which are more formal. You have to be careful there. I used to tell Judge Willett he was far more out there with humor than I have ever been. Mine tends to be a little bit dryer. I did something where I was like, “You all have that big Fifth Circuit opinion.” I said something like, “What about this, colleagues? My 50-page opinions don’t look like that.” That’s my form of humor. Start slowly. I did get good advice. Early on, my feed was boring and it was more like, “I’m looking forward to speaking to the Civic Club. I’m looking forward to doing this.” I had a law student message me. She said, “It’s great that you are doing this. I haven’t seen many judges out here but if you want to connect with people, tell people who you are. Reveal a little bit more about who you are and what it’s like to be a judge.”
I started doing things like taking photos. If I was at a big event, I take these insider photos behind the scenes. I tried to bring the people from, “Maybe we were in South Georgia into the room where it happens and let them see things that were going on.” You want to feel your way through it, start slow and then develop along the way, participate. Follow people who you think are good at what they are doing, lawyers or judges and then you can start to pick up on things. I have had a few people do that, where they have done some things that are a little bit derivative of what I do. I’m like, “Good for them.” Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I love that. That’s a good thing. Some things they probably don’t need to emulate but I do some things well. It’s all about developing your own voice and personality over time.
It has made the world smaller. Do you think you would have had that relationship with Judge Willett or Judge McCormack or a number of the folks that you threw out their names and you call them your friend? It would have been a lot more difficult for you to develop those relationships without Twitter specifically or other social media. It does open the window and allow others to peek in. How did you get to be on this show? It’s because we were having a chat. Clubhouse started it, believe it or not, but through Twitter as well. It has opened so many windows and doors. It’s great that you have helped to fill the gap left by Justice Willett, now Judge Willett, when he had to ride off into the Twitter sunset. I enjoy following your account and Justice McCormack’s account and many others. We’ve got plenty of judges here in Texas who are active and doing it for the right reasons like what you are describing.
I’m thankful that I have been able to develop those friendships with the lawyers and judges. That has been rewarding and probably the other thing that has been rewarding is getting to know some of the students and being able to mentor folks. One of the most surprising things to me is being able to meet law students and people who are interested in the law and being able to offer them advice and give back in a way where I can maybe send somebody a message or tweet at them if they have their first motion hearing and say, “Here’s some advice.” That would have been unthinkable when I was a young attorney.
One of the things we have an obligation as both judges and lawyers is to give back and to mentor. That has been revolutionary in addition to getting to meet some cool lawyers and judges and develop friendships that you might not have otherwise developed unless you are at a conference or something. You get to know people. We are all putting our best foot forward. None of us are perfect. We probably all look a lot better on social media than we are in real life. That is not a bad thing. You want to try to put your best foot forward. Over time, who you are, you reveal yourself in the way you write.
For me, those friendships and being able to mentor lawyers. I have even tried to help people. I have gotten people who wanted to come to the United States from England. I have been able to contact this person that may be able to help. For better, for worse having the title of a judge means something to a lot of folks. Being able to put a kind word out there and give someone advice or encouragement because I have that platform and title and to be able to impact someone’s life, that is meaningful to me.
That is one thing I have to commend you on, is that you do bring kindness in everything that you do on social media. A lot of times it’s missing on social media. That’s one of the reasons that you do such a great job is you do bring that. Even if it’s to wish everyone a great weekend and tell them to be kind to each other, those are reminders that we all need, especially in 2020, 2021. Thank you for doing that because it is nice to have someone remind us of all those things.
I do it because I need to be reminded of it too. I’m not perfect and I’m not always kind. I can be short with my beautiful bride, my kids or my friends. By no means am I perfect. I say a lot of those things because I need to hear them as well. It does seem a lot of the time there is a lot of toxic discourse going on, on social media platforms. We can all do what we can to try to lower the temperature and to promote kindness and civility. There’s a lot of criticism that somehow kindness, civility and asking people to be kind and civil is a way of trying to tamp down debate or to somehow keep people silent. I don’t believe that at all. I believe that you can be passionate about advocating for your rights or access to justice. You can do that in a way that is still kind and civil.
Dr. King showed us that you can be passionate while still being civil. I think of him and he’s the obvious choice. He was one of my heroes and people that I have tried to emulate, poorly, but I have tried to emulate my entire life because of the way he lived his life. That’s important to say because a lot of times people view civility and kindness as being weaponizing, trying to silence people. To the extent, that is done, I strongly disagree with it. I like to think of things in a charitable light. Most people that are calling for kindness and civility are doing so because they look around and they see a country that on some days seems to be tearing itself apart. If I can move things ever so slightly in the right direction as a public official, that’s important for me to do.
We appreciate you sharing that. It’s something other folks ought to emulate a lot more than we tend to see.
We are coming toward the end here, Judge. Before we go, we wanted to give you the opportunity to share a specific tip or a war story if you had one other than what you have already mentioned.
I will give my tips that I think are a little revolutionary that my good friend Dahlia Lithwick taught me at a conference. I have mentioned it before on Twitter. A lot of times, practitioners are procrastinators and perfectionists. We are going to the last minute and we don’t have the time that we need to let something marinate and read it and our eyes start to glaze over. One trick that Dalia taught me at a DRI conference many years ago is that when you get to that point before you have to file something, save your document and then go and change the font and make it bigger and print it out and read through it again. It’s like reading a different document. You will catch a lot of things that you didn’t catch. It’s a trick of the eyes. That’s a minor tip but it’s life-changing for me because I frequently would file things on the last day. That’s why I tend to be generous with the brief extensions because I try to remember what it was like to be a practitioner.
I don’t know anybody that does that. Judge, this has been informative. We have enjoyed hearing more about the Georgia court system. Your views on judges and social media are good lessons for judges throughout the country and even beyond. We would encourage more members of the judiciary to follow that approach and get out there and reach out and touch their constituents is one way of looking at it. You have been so gracious with your time. We sure appreciate you coming on.
I’m glad to do it. I would always love to come back some other time.
We would love to have you back.
We will have you back. Don’t worry. We are happy to do that.
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Important Links:
- Georgia Court of Appeals
- The Robed Tweeter – Article
- Twitter – Judge Stephen Dillard
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About Judge Stephen Dillard
Presiding Judge Stephen Louis A. Dillard was appointed as the 73rd judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia on November 1, 2010 by Governor Sonny Perdue. Prior to his appointment, Judge Dillard was in private practice with James, Bates, Pope & Spivey in Macon, serving as chairman of the firm’s appellate practice group.
Judge Dillard was elected and reelected by his fellow Georgians in 2012 and 2018. On July 1, 2017, Judge Dillard was sworn in as the 30th Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia for a two-year term that ended on June 30, 2019. He currently serves as the presiding judge of the Court’s Fourth Division.
Judge Dillard was born in Nashville, Tennessee on November 13, 1969. He attended and graduated from Hillwood High School in Nashville, Tennessee; Samford University (B.A. 1992); and the Mississippi College School of Law (J.D., cum laude, 1996). In college, Judge Dillard was a member of The Sigma Chi Fraternity and Omicron Delta Kappa. He was also given the Evelyn Meadows Historical Essay Award, as well as the William McMillian Rogers Colonial Dames Overall Essay Award for “The Tempting of America to be America: Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Papers.”
During law school, Judge Dillard was a member of the Moot Court Board and received the Judge Robert G. Gillespie Outstanding Achievement in Appellate Advocacy Award, as well as the American Jurisprudence Award in Appellate Advocacy. He also reactivated the Mississippi College Chapter of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, serving as its president for three years.
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