“For over 45 years, I have practiced law with the philosophy that lawyers are in a position of a high privilege and responsibility. We hold the keys to the places where people go to find justice.
In a sense, we hold access to those places in trust for our clients, but also for society at large. When we forget that, we don’t just put our clients at risk, we put our way of life at risk. We satisfy that responsibility, in part, by offering our clients solutions they can afford to pay for, both in terms of fees and in terms of costs incurred. We also satisfy it by putting the need to bring clients to resolution of their problems ahead of our need to create billable hours and our own egos.”
in Columbus, Georgia.
Fife M. Whiteside graduated from the Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi in 1974, with a B.A. in English. He attended the University of Mississippi Law School in Oxford, Mississippi, and graduated with a J.D. in 1976. While in law school, he was on the Editorial Board of the Space Law Journal and was elected treasurer of the law school student body.
He started law practice in December of 1976 in an unfinished basement in another lawyer’s building in a small town in north Mississippi. He worked behind an army surplus desk and sat in a used chair. The basement flooded periodically and there was an outside stairwell that the homeless used occasionally as s public restroom. He inventoried a small drug store the first month of his law practice to get the money to buy gasoline for his 10-year-old Dodge Dart.
Within four years he had tried two homicide cases, over a dozen civil cases, and established a practice in commercial collections and bankruptcy, representing two local banks in that area for collections, and having a listing in the American Lawyer’s Quarterly.
Continuing his interest in commercial and bankruptcy law, he took a job as the only law clerk that the Hon. Algie M. Moseley (Middle District Bankruptcy Court Judge) ever had. He moved to Columbus, Georgia in 1981 and was the Judge’s law clerk for two years, resuming practice as a sole practitioner in 1983.
He has been in continuous law practice in Columbus, Georgia since 1983, concentrating in bankruptcy, commercial litigation, and creditor’s rights. He has represented numerous debtors and committees in Chapter 11 cases and has served as an elected bankruptcy trustee in four different cases, in one of which a creditor recovery where $8,000,000.00 was obtained. He has represented a number of petitioning creditors and debtors in prosecuting or defending involuntary bankruptcy cases, including one successful prosecution of one public company and one successful defense of another public company. He has also defended or prosecuted over 200 preference or fraudulent transfer claims.
He has always been active in community and professional service. He established, with the assistance of the Columbus Bar Association, the second public access computer research terminal in the state in the Columbus Lawyers’ Library in the early 80’s. He was elected as president of the Columbus Bar Association in 1997, and served on the Board of Directors of the Bankruptcy Session of the State Bar for 2 years between 1993 and 1994.
He was elected to the Muscogee County School Board in 1993 and served 15 years acting as the legislative liaison and chair of the construction committee, overseeing over $200,000,000.00 in school construction. He is a fly fisherman and a ham radio operator, and swims regularly for exercise.