Since leaving the Fulton County Office of the District Attorney having served as one of its youngest Deputy Attorneys ever, Keith Lamar established his own practice — the Law Offices of Keith Lamar Jr.
Career-defining moves are nothing new to the Morehouse College graduate, who currently serves the community as a personal injury and criminal defense attorney. Among other things, attorney Lamar sat down with rolling out and discussed how humbling it was to serve as the National Black Prosecutors Association’s president and bring the yearly conference to his hometown of Atlanta.
What’s been the biggest difference between working with Fulton County District Attorney’s office and now running your own practice?
It’s a little bit more profitable [laughs]. … But honestly, it’s really more about getting out there in the field and really getting to know people. I try to make sure that people know who I am. [I want] the person [to] know that I actually care about them. The biggest difference is going out there and finding the people that are really in need.
What was it like being the president of the NBPA and bringing the conference to Atlanta?
It’s a humbling experience, honestly. Atlanta being my hometown, I wanted to make sure that the conference came here so that people could see that there are Black prosecutors and Black attorneys all over this nation. I wanted to get them to come together and share ideas. The biggest thing I wanted to do was have people network with one another. So when you go out to New York or you go to LA or … Miami, anywhere in the country, you know somebody that’s just like you. I had a humbling experience doing it — [I] loved doing it. I’m still a part of the board now and I will [be at the] next conference in Chicago.
So outside of coming together, what kind of work is being done?
So one thing that we do is we have a junior conference, we call [participants] our junior D.A.s. What we do is try to get them to see what they can be.
Mr. Howard in the Fulton County D.A.’s office loves to say, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” So why not spread that message nationally? So what we do is we get a lot of kids, we have a lot of different groups where we do different mock trials and make them feel more comfortable about [speaking] and having confidence in themselves. Besides that, we do training for lawyers … year-round.
