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My Name Is Jeff Cunningham.
My Name Is Jeff Cunningham.
I didn’t always want to be an attorney. In college at Vanderbilt, I planned to be an Investment Banker or some other captain of industry. I knew that I would want to attend Business School, so in order gain practical business experience beforehand, I took a job with The Kroger Company as a Store Manager. From there I enrolled at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business for my MBA. There, the Business Law professor, Ebb Oakley, suggested that I consider Law School, and offered me a position as his Graduate Research Assistant if I went to Law School at GSU.
During Law School, while working as a Graduate Research Assistant, I took a job with KPMG doing State and Local Tax Consulting. There I learned the fundamentals of tax advantaged structuring and restructuring.
After a few years I decided to embrace the practice of law and left KPMG for a law firm. Almost from the beginning, I gravitated to entrepreneurial and fast-growing businesses. Over the last twenty plus years, I have been privileged to serve as Outside General Counsel and advisor for some amazingly creative entrepreneurs and fantastic business owners.
Since 2011 I have been an active member of a Vistage CE group, meeting monthly with a close group of business owners and CEOs in the Atlanta area. That association has given me a valuable insight into what it means to be an entrepreneur and a CEO, and has allowed me to design programs to help business owners maximize enterprise value. Not many attorneys have that experience
History & Expertise
History & Expertise
Law School
Law School
J.D., 1996 – 1999, Georgia State University College of Law
Work Experience
Work Experience
Partner, Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP - 2020 - Present
Member, Miller & Martin PLLC, 2018 - 2020
Partner, Seyfarth Shaw, 2008-2018
Education
Education
MBA, 1995 – 1996, Georgia State University - J. Mack Robinson College of Business
BS, Economics, 1989-1992 - Vanderbilt University
Awards
Awards
Ranked in 27th Edition of The Best Lawyers in America
Named in 2019 Georgia Trend Legal Elite
9.6 Rating on Avvo
Board Seats
Board Seats
Atlanta Humane Society: Chair of Finance Committee 2010 - 2016
Sarah Smith Education Foundation: Board Chair 2010 - 2014
Bar Admissions
Bar Admissions
American Bar Association
Georgia State Bar Association
My Practice
My Practice
My Family
My Family
My clients' success is important to me. I measure the health of my practice in terms of their success rather than in hours billed or the dollar value of a transaction. The businesses I serve employ tens of thousands of people, and those people collectively put millions of meals on tables, buy thousands of houses and cars, pay for thousands of educations, and collectively add to the fabric of their respective communities. These are better measures of success than dollars or hours.
I have an amazing wife and two incredible daughters. I want them to be proud of the work I do and the clients I serve. I enjoy being involved in my church (Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta), their schools (Pace Academy), and various community endeavors (Atlanta Humane Society, especially).
My Philosphy
My Philosphy
"It's Important To Overcome The Hourly Rate To Help Good People Build Great Businesses"
"It's Important To Overcome The Hourly Rate To Help Good People Build Great Businesses"
Over twenty years of practice I have come to understand that a smart and thoughtful business attorney can add tremendous value to an entrepreneurial or growing business. But in a climate in which predictability of cash flow is an imperative, the unpredictability of the hourly rate has led generations of entrepreneurs and business owners to avoid attorneys, opting instead to self-help and select legal resources based on price or image.
My mission is to help good businesses become great, help great businesses become greater, and in doing so, help good people take great care of their families, employees, investors, and clients.
As a Partner in one of the country's premier full-service business law firms, I often serve as issue spotter, translator, and manager smoothing access and communications between business owners and subject matter experts both inside and outside my firm.
This site is a collection of thoughts, reflections, tips, and tools that I have observed and developed over the course of serving growing businesses through a variety of economic, financial, and cultural cycles. I intend to add to this body of work regularly.
The writings here are instructed not only by my legal practice, but also by my roles as husband, father, son, brother, uncle, cousin, nephew, friend, and member of many communities.
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