RICHARD GRIGGS
Partner

Richard is an experienced litigator who spent the first half of his professional career primarily defending insurance companies, and their insured individual and corporate clients, in personal injury and wrongful death cases involving car, truck, and other commercial vehicle wrecks, professional negligence, defective products, and premises liability.

Richard took this broad-based defense and courtroom experience to the nationally known plaintiffs’ litigation boutique of Butler Wooten where he developed experience on the plaintiff’s side in the areas of general products liability, automotive products liability, tractor-trailer, commercial vehicles, and other serious motor vehicle wrecks, premises liability, and other negligence cases involving complex issues and significant, catastrophic injuries and death. In 2001, Richard, Cale Conley and another Butler Wooten lawyer started their own practice focusing on these same areas, and, in 2004, Richard and Cale continued their practice of law together by forming Conley Griggs LLP.

Richard has been sole, lead or co-lead counsel in approximately 30 cases tried to a verdict. He is adept at handling complex cases involving medical and scientific evidence, the use of multiple expert witnesses, large volumes of documents, and frequent motions, filings and court appearances. Richard is accustomed to working closely with his client’s medical doctors to understand the nature, extent and cause of their injuries and/or death, and has developed particular experience in handling cases involving brain injuries of all kinds.

Richard takes his job, the cases he works on and the clients he represents seriously and with a keen attention to detail. Whether he is tracking down and interviewing a key witness in a remote location, preparing a legal brief advocating an important point of law, drafting court-filed pleadings to gain access to pertinent documents, meeting with a critical treating physician, locating and retaining a top-flight, highly credentialed expert witness, or taking an essential deposition, he brings thorough preparedness, creative thinking and shear hard work to the task.

Richard has authored papers and articles on trial practice and evidentiary topics that have been published in The Brief magazine, the national quarterly publication of the American Bar Association’s Tort, Trial and Insurance Practice Section, the Mercer Law Review, and the Georgia Defense Lawyers Journal. He has been a featured speaker at seminars hosted by the American Bar Association, the Institute of Continuing Legal Education in Georgia (ICLE), Lorman Educational Services, and the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association (GTLA), on topics including tractor-trailer cases, jury selection, accident reconstruction, pre-suit investigation of civil claims, brain injuries, products liability, expert witnesses, wrongful death, demonstrative evidence and other trial-related subjects. He has volunteered as a judge for Atlanta area high school mock trial competitions.

Richard is admitted to practice law in all state and superior courts in Georgia, including the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Georgia Supreme Court. He is admitted to practice in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, as well as the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a member of the Atlanta Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Georgia, the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association (past co-chair of Trucking Committee and current co-chair of Membership Committee), the Brain Injury Association of Georgia (BIAG), the Lawyers Club of Atlanta, and the Lawyers Foundation of Georgia. He has been nominated to the position of a Vice-Chair of the Commercial Transportation Litigation Committee of the ABA’s Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section.

In terms of his educational training, Richard received a B.A. degree from the University of Georgia in Athens and a law degree from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. At Mercer, Richard was a member of both the Moot Court Board and the Law Review. Only a handful of students were selected to membership in both of these two prestigious academic organizations. He was the Prosecutor of the law school’s Honor Court, where he investigated and prosecuted students who violated the school’s honor code. Richard’s second-year moot court team took home the coveted Best Brief for Respondent Award at the John J. Gibbons Moot Court Competition at Seton Hall University in Newark, New Jersey, and his law review case note, which analyzed an important U.S. Supreme Court case, was selected for publication in the Mercer Law Review. Richard won several legal writing awards from the law school faculty and a national legal publishing firm. Shortly before graduation, Richard was admitted to the Order of Barristers, a national organization recognizing excellence in courtroom advocacy.

Richard is married and has one child, a son. He and his wife are members of the First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, the Atlanta History Center, and the Woodruff Arts Center. They live in Atlanta and donate time and effort to local organizations such as Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and the Atlanta Charity Clays.