Georgia covers a whole career — and warns you anyway
Georgia publishes public disciplinary history from January 1991 onward, and shows disbarment from any time at all. That is the widest window of any register on this site. Set it against Florida, where ten years showed us 18% of a 55-year career, and you have the clearest proof we have found that a badge is not a uniform unit.
For nine of these twelve the window opens before their career does, so there is no stretch of it the record does not reach. Foy was admitted in November 1993, two years after the window; Grant Morain in July 1991, six months after, the narrowest margin here.
Three careers that start before the record does
The other three were admitted before January 1991, and the register does not reach their early years:
This is the Florida problem at the other end of a career. It suggests nothing about any of them — Georgia shows disbarment from any time, so that outcome is accounted for regardless. It means that for anything short of disbarment before 1991, the register cannot tell you either way, and their cards say so.
Barnes is the sharpest case on the site. Fifty-three years at the bar, a former Governor of Georgia, and the register reaches about two-thirds of it.
Georgia is also unusually honest about its own edges. It states that if a lawyer has been suspended or disbarred and subsequently reinstated or readmitted, the site could show their membership status as “in Good Standing.” Status and history are two questions. It further states that grievances, investigations and private discipline are confidential, and that the data carries no warranty of any kind.
It even cautions that attorneys may have similar names. We matched every one of the twelve on firm and address as well as name — which is exactly the check that caution is asking for, and the check that would have caught a mismatch we hit on another state page.
Where the register is thinner than it looks
Erwin Mark Stephens’ entry carries no firm, no street address, no telephone and no email — just a name, the city of Decatur, his status, admission date, law school and two Bar sections. Everything identifying where he practises comes from his own site. Mary Paige Gray’s address is annotated “By Appointment” by the Bar itself.
And four of the twelve are not registered in Atlanta at all: Barnes in Marietta, Hays in Duluth, Pendergrass in Peachtree Corners and Stephens in Decatur — all inside the metro, none inside the city. Their cards say so.
What we haven’t checked
Not established. Any grievance, investigation or private discipline for any of the twelve, which Georgia says it cannot confirm or deny.
Twenty-six years of career that fall before the window opens — nineteen of Barnes’s, five of Goldman’s, two of Hays’s. Whether any of the twelve is licensed in another state: Georgia’s directory has no such field, so unlike Arizona we cannot even see the claim.
Stephens’s firm, address, telephone and email, none of which his Bar record carries. What an appointment-only address means in practice for
Gray, whose site also dates recoveries to 2019, two years before her own admission. Which of
Morain’s two firm names is the operating entity. Whether the four registered outside the city run Atlanta files from Atlanta. Practice areas and fee terms for all twelve — Georgia publishes neither, so every rideshare tag here rests on the firm’s own marketing. Court records for any settlement or verdict figure. A bar check is a floor, not a ranking.
Coverage grows market by market. If you handle rideshare cases elsewhere in Georgia, tell us you exist — it costs nothing and buys nothing, but it gets you looked at. All states · How we work