Admitted to the Alabama State Bar in 1978, he spent thirty years as an Assistant District Attorney and in private practice: prosecution and defense, families and businesses, trials won and cases settled on the courthouse steps.

Appointed Judge of Probate for Shelby County by Governor Bob Riley in 2008 and elected to a full term in 2012, he spent a decade exercising full equity jurisdiction: contested estates, will contests, trust and fiduciary disputes, and guardianship and conservatorship proceedings. He heard these cases the way counsel will meet them again in mediation: on a dense record, with high stakes, and with families in the courtroom. He also sat as a Special Circuit Court Judge and presided over the Shelby County Mental Health Court.

Eastern Shore Mediation is his full-time mediation practice, engaged by counsel across the United States, by agreement of the parties, in high-value probate, fiduciary, and complex civil disputes. The session is held wherever the matter sits; the firm travels to the parties.