Nearing halftime of the Legal Food Frenzy, Georgia’s legal community has raised $19,044 online for the state’s food banks.

As of 3:50 p.m., five legal organizations had raised more than $1,000: Kilpatrick, Townsend & Stockton, $3,605; Alston & Bird, $1,965; Georgia Department of Law, $1,470; Office of DeKalb Solicitor-General, $1,200 and King & Spalding, $1,175.

Showing that small donations can add up, another 31 organizations had raised between $10 and $995, totalling $10,959, or more than half of the current online total.

The funds’ impact will be multiplied by at least seven, in that food banks say they can stretch $1 into at least $7 of food. The resources help feed hungry people–especially children who in the coming summer months will not be able to rely on food assistance at school.

The Frenzy’s goal is to raise $55,000 in online donations by the end of next week.

To donate, go here.

Legal groups have donated another $4,400 to Georgia’s food banks, with the Legal Food Frenzy cash total reaching $15,983 as of 4:42 p.m.

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton continued to lead the online donations list, with $3,605, with Alston & Bird holding second place with $1,480.  DeKalb Solicitor was in third with $1,070, followed by King & Spalding with $905.

The Daily Report team was in fifth place, with $816, followed by the Georgia Department of Law at $790.

Frenzy organizers have a $55,000 goal for online donations, which means donations will need to pick up some speed to reach the goal by next Friday, May 3.

According to Greg Sims, the annual giving manager at the Atlanta Community Food Bank, the Frenzy last year collected $51,857 online, plus another $55,652.43 in off-line cash donations.  Groups also collected 20,378 pounds of food for the Atlanta food bank.

Legal groups have donated another $5,000 to Georgia’s food banks, with the Legal Food Frenzy cash total reaching $12,511 as of 4:45 p.m.

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton maintained a commanding lead for total cash raised, adding nearly $2,000 from this time Tuesday for a total of $3,320.

The other top cash-giving teams are: Alston & Bird, with $1,165; DeKalb Solicitor, $985; King & Spalding, $835 and the Daily Report Team, with $711.

Food banks say they can buy more than $7 of food for each $1 raised, so the Frenzy has so far raised more than 50,000 pounds of food.

Georgia Legal Food Frenzy gained momentum on Tuesday, the second day of the fundraiser for the state’s food banks.

The effort had collected $7,281 as of 4 p.m., nearly $6,000 more than Monday’s late-afternoon total.  The cash is important for the food banks, which say they can stretch $1 into more than $7 worth of food.

The top teams so far are: Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, with $1,560; Alston & Bird, $550; Jason R. Schultz P.C., $500; Rogers & Hardin, $500; and DeKalb Solicitor, $410.

The Frenzy is also collecting actual food in bins within competing organizations.  The Atlanta Food Bank says it is in special need of: peanut butter, canned tuna, canned beans, canned soups, stews, pastas, 100% fruit juice, canned fruits, vegetables, macaroni and cheese dinners, whole grains, low sugar cereals (boxed.)

The winners will be judged on how many pounds of food raised, with each $1 counting as four pounds of food.  Not counting cans that have been donated, just from the cash the Frenzy has raised 29,124 pounds of food for hungry people.

Come back here for daily updates.

To donate, you can go here and look up a particular team you’d like to support.  For more information, our original post is here.

Georgia’s Legal Food Frenzy started Monday, and by the late afternoon, the legal community had already raised more than $1,400 for the state’s food banks.  The two-week fundraising effort lets law firms and other legal organizations to compete over who collects the most food.  Food bank organizers said cash is particularly welcome, as they can stretch $1 to but more than $7 worth of food.

As of 4:30 p.m. today, the Legal Food Frenzy website said $1,406 had been raised, with a goal listed as $55,000.  The top teams were Alston & Bird, Hunton & Williams and the Cherokee Circuit District Attorney’s Office—each with $200 raised.  The Daily Report was next in line with $171 raised.

Given that last year’s effort raised 625,000 pounds of food, there is a lot of frenzy left to occur.  Stay tuned for daily updates.

To donate, you can go here and look up a particular team you’d like to support.  For more information, our original post is here.

A disbarred Duluth real estate lawyer was sentenced today to 27 months in federal prison for stealing funds from real estate transactions he handled, the U.S. Attorney in Atlanta announced today.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. sentenced Neal Landers, 46, for wire fraud in January. Landers was disbarred in 2008.

“Landers violated the law and the trust of his clients when he used his firm’s escrow account as his own personal piggy bank,” U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said after Landers was sentenced.

According to federal prosecutors, in 2007 Landers began using his office as a real estate closing lawyer to misappropriate an estimated $150,000 in funds from real estate closings that had been deposited in his escrow account.

Prosecutors said Landers delayed paying out funds associated with the closings for weeks and sometimes months, instead using them to pay funds he had failed to distribute in earlier real estate closings.

Landers also transferred monies  far exceeding legitimate closing fees from his escrow account to a personal checking account, then used the stolen funds to pay personal expenses, prosecutors said.

Landers’ attorney, Thomas Hawker, was in court and could not be reached for comment.

Attorney General Sam Olens and State Bar President Robin Frazer Clark on Tuesday challenged members of the legal community to raise 750,000 pounds of food for Georgia food banks during the second annual Legal Food Frenzy.

The competition among firms and other legal groups runs from April 22 to May 3, providing critical supplies to food banks just as children who rely on free lunches in schools will be getting out for the summer and will struggle to find enough to eat. Olens said 60 percent of public school students are eligible for free lunches.

Clark cited statistics reporting that 28.3 percent of children in the state–about 640,000 boys and girls–regularly do not have enough to eat. ”That’s astounding, and it needs to stop,” she added. Read more »

Jake Waldrop, a federal public defender, was found yesterday afternoon dead in an apparent suicide, an Atlanta Police report said.

The police Wednesday released a report from an officer who responded to the scene on the 10th floor of the State Bar of Georgia’s parking garage, where Waldrop was said to park regularly. His office was across the street.

Waldrop had a gunshot wound in his chest, the report said. ”There were no signs of a struggle or foul play and the scene appeared to be consistent with that of a suicide,” it added.

Bar president Robin Frazer Clark confirmed Wednesday that Waldrop’s body was found in his car in the garage.

“The State Bar is obviously saddened at the loss of one of our members, especially one so young,” Clark said. ”We will be working on new ideas to make our members and their office mates and family and friends more aware of the risk of suicide and what we can each do to help prevent it.”

The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival is showing a documentary tonight and tomorrow that may be of special interest to lawyers.

“The Law in These Parts,” a Grand Jury Prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival, “is an unflinching examination of Israel’s contorted legal framework for governing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and the complex moral and legal dilemmas therein,” the festival website says. “Since the 1967 War, inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been subjected to what was intended as a temporary system of military rather than civilian justice, overseen by the Israeli Defense Forces. Adopting inventive filmmaking and investigative techniques, filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz (James’ Journey to Jerusalem) places now-retired judges, attorneys and generals on a cinematic witness stand to consider a number of troubling case studies, and the logic and repercussions of the Kafkaesque rule of law they helped to create. With historical footage projected behind them, interviewees submit to hard-hitting and often uncomfortable questions from which a core conundrum emerges: can a country sustain a prolonged military occupation without eroding its democratic values?”

The film plays tonight at Lefont Sandy Springs, starting at 7:40 p.m., and it is followed by a discussion with Laurie R. Blank,  Director,  International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Emory University; Sharon Kabalo, Deputy Consul General
of Israel; David Lewis, a journalist, documentarian and producer.

The film will be shown Wednesday at Lefont Sandy Springs at 2:30 p.m., with panelists Opher Aviran, Consul General of
Israel; Kevin Cieply, B.S., J.D., LL.M., Associate Dean of Academics and Associate Professor, John Marshall Law School; and Itai Tsur Community Advocate.

DeKalb County Solicitor Sherry Boston has teamed up with a county commissioner to fill the coffers of local food banks.  Here is the text of a press release issued today:

DeKalb County Officials to Sponsor Food Drive

Decatur, Ga.   – The plight of local food banks has caught the attention of two DeKalb County officials who are sponsoring a
food drive to help replenish the shelves at the Atlanta Community Food Bank. Commissioner Kathie Gannon and DeKalb County Solicitor-General Sherry Boston are teaming up to sponsor a food drive to kick off on Valentine’s Day. “Solicitor-General Boston and I are asking all DeKalb employees and citizens to donate food for the hungry,” said Gannon. “This time of year after the holidays the pantry shelves at the Atlanta Community Food Bank are looking bare,” said Solicitor-General Boston.

Hunger is Georgia has become a bigger problem since the recession. Roughly 17% of the households and 28% of children in the area served by the Atlanta Community Food Bank, which includes DeKalb, do not always know where their next meal is coming from. Food collection barrels will be placed in DeKalb County government office buildings including the Court House and Maloof Center. The Food Drive will last from February 12 to February 28^th. Among the most needed items are canned tuna, peanut butter, fruit juices, canned vegetables and paper products.

“No one should have to choose between paying the rent, paying for their prescriptions or paying for food,” explained Boston. “I’ve seen the generosity of DeKalb County employees and I know they will help by donating food,” said Gannon. Nobody should go to bed hungry in DeKalb County. Citizens and employees are encouraged to bring donations to the following County buildings: Maloof Center at 1300 Commerce Drive, the Court House at 556 McDonough Street, the Clark Harrison Building at 330 West Ponce de Leon, the Tax Commissioners Office at 4380 memorial Drive.