So who am I, and what’s this all about?

I have practiced labor and employment law for over 33 years, most of that time with Miller & Martin, which has offices in Atlanta,
Chattanooga, and Nashville. Early on, I picked the employer’s side, since you really can’t work both sides of the street in this
area of the law. I have tried employment lawsuits, developed employment policies, handled sticky terminations including Reductions
in Force, and battled with unions.

About 20 years ago, I decided to focus on preventing lawsuits instead of defending them. Of course, you can’t prevent all lawsuits,
and you have to be ready to defend them. But if you routinely do the latter, you’re spending big bucks that take away from the
bottom line.

So I began an employment law newsletter for Tennessee employers, Tennessee Employment Law Letter, to look at some practical ways of
solving employment problems before they become employment lawsuits. I held in-house training for human resources professionals and
company supervisors, spoke at all kinds of HR and business conferences, and challenged my clients to attack traditional personnel
problems in a proactive, creative way.

In short order, I hooked up with M. Lee Smith Publishers, the host of this blog on its HRhero website, to handle my newsletter. And
then things really started rolling. We created state-specific employment law newsletters for the other 49 states plus the District
of Columbia. We formed the Employers Counsel Network consisting of the editors of all the newsletters. I wrote two books on
employment law. I began presenting audio conferences. I became the moderator of Lee Smith’s long-running Advanced Employment Issues
Symposium, a national conference for HR professionals. With the help of the publishers, I designed and hosted three different
editions of the award-winning training series called Danger Zones for Supervisors. We recently rolled out out a one-of-a-kind
training DVD for executives called Executive Summary: Employment Law for the C-Suite.

I also had the good fortune of serving for several years as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc,
the world’s largest bottler of Coke products. When you have 65,000 employees located all across the country, you learn more than you
ever dreamed you could about employment law and HR practices.

I believe more strongly than ever that the preventive, proactive, creative approach to employment problems in any type of workplace
is the way for HR to operate. Newsletters, video and DVD training, books, audio conferences and live HR conferences all help HR
professionals take this approach.

But in this fast-paced, sometimes crazy world in which we work, something happens every day you need to know about. Thus, my blog.
While there will be some in-depth stuff for you to read when you have time, most of my posts will be to the point. My goal is to
give you quick, practical information. There will also be plenty of links to other blogs, articles, cases, and who knows what else.

And I want to hear from you–questions, comments, disagreements, ideas, humor, opinion. So onward and upward. Let’s help each other
out. Let’s learn together. Let’s have some fun.