Hello!  My name is Fatima Harris Felton, Chair of the Lawyer Referral and Information Service (LRIS) Board of Trustees and panel member since 2007. A hearty welcome to our new members and thank you to our veteran panel attorneys. I joined LRIS in 2007 hoping to make a return on the investment for having signed up. I am happy to say that I made a return on that investment; and I am still a panel member today.

I graduated from Tulane Law School in 2005. After a portion of my Louisiana Bar exam was lost to Hurricane Katrina, I came to Georgia and took the bar exam far away from floods and hurricanes. Thankfully, my Georgia Bar exam did not get swept away in a flood. After passing the bar, I started my own law firm: The Harris Law Firm, LLC. In my 17 years of practice, I have had many shifting responsibilities including attorney, part-time judge, teacher, guardian ad litem and most importantly wife and mother. LRIS panel membership has been a constant throughout those years. I joined the LRIS Board of Trustees as a Member-At-Large in 2017, and now serve as the Chair. My goal is to lead us all through a year of progression and growth. LRIS donated $160,000 of the revenue generated from your consultation and panel referral fees to the Atlanta Bar Foundation last year. The Atlanta Bar Foundation funds the Summer Law and Internship Program, the Minority and Diversity Clerkship Program, Atlanta Legal Aid and Atlanta Volunteer Lawyer Foundation among other pro bono programs in Georgia. I hope our journey together this year will allow LRIS to match last year’s contribution. You can help further this goal by continuing to conduct consultations and remit panel referral fees in a timely manner. I look forward to the road ahead for LRIS. Thank you for being part of the journey.

To join LRIS, go to atlantabar.org. Click Lawyer Referral and Information Service, then click LRIS Membership Application on the right-hand side.