Robert L. Jenkins | Attorney

I was born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Roswell.  As the fifth out of six children, it is not surprising that I became a lawyer.  Being the youngest of the three boys in my family dictated that I had to be tough.  It also dictated that I had to be quick, if I wanted my point heard.  Finally, playing sports with these older guys taught me to learn to quickly survey the field, spot the dangers and achieve my objectives quickly.  If not, the youngest kid never sees the ball again.

 With this background, I went through school with relative ease and good grades.  I was expected, as was each of my brothers, to pay my own way through life.  I began working a regular time-clock job when I was 13 years old and have been working ever since.  I paid for virtually everything I ever owned and this was the case when I bought my first car at age 16.  I was working retail at that time and, when I was 18, became a department manager of a large retail chain.  I was the youngest manager the history of the company.  I was making more money than I had a right to and decided to continue on that path instead of college.

 Over the next 10 years, I steadily rose through the ranks of the company and became the youngest assistant manager in the company as well.  At that time, I had 232 employees and was a rising star.  However, it was also that time that I was driving one and one-half hours to and from work and putting in over 100 hours of work per week.  It was not worth it.  It was at that time that I thought back to what I had really wanted to do in life before I began to work. 

 So, after 10 years out of school, I went back to the University of Georgia in 1987.  By taking overload course schedules and going straight through the summers all the while working 30 to 40 hours per week, I made it through school in just three years with a 3.86 GPA.  I majored in political science and concentrated on public administration.  From there I went on to law school in Birmingham, Alabama. 

 In law school, I was fortunate enough to be selected to the Cumberland Law Review.  This selection was due to the fact that I made high grades.  I worked from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm each week day on school work.  The school prohibited work during the first year of law school, so I considered school my job. I decided to study abroad over that summer and spent the summer in England and Germany. 

In my second year, while still maintaining good grades, I decided to go back to work.  I worked as an intern for the Honorable Edward S. Smith, a Federal Circuit Appellate Judge on senior status, for over 30 hours per week and also for a local Birmingham, Alabama law firm for another 30 hours per week.  I did this through my third year as well.

I moved to Savannah after graduation and began working with an insurance defense firm.  I defended insurance companies and insureds for about six years and then moved on to open my own firm.  I was doing this work when I was approached by my partner, Wilson Smith, to join forces and work together.  Since that time, Wilson and I have worked to enforce the rights of individuals who have been injured through the litigation process.