After early career turns, Ivy Cadle settles into State Bar pilot’s seat

Reprinted with permission from the Georgia Bar Journal, Volume 30, Number 1, August 2024. Copyright State Bar of Georgia. Statements expressed within this article should not be considered endorsements of products or procedures by the State Bar of Georgia.

Jerry Cadle has practiced law in Swainsboro since 1975—three years before his son, Ivy Cadle, was born. Therefore, it might be natural to assume the son had always dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming an attorney. It might be natural, but it would be wrong.

“No, it was quite the opposite,” Ivy Cadle said in an interview shortly after taking office as the 62nd president of the State Bar of Georgia. His initial reluctance to pursuing a career in the legal profession, he said, stemmed from a memorably unpleasant “take your kid to work” experience when he was 15.

“I went along with my dad to the records room at the Emanuel County Courthouse,” Cadle said, repeating a story he shared at the State Bar’s Annual Meeting in June. “The thing that stuck with me as we drove off was that I was in the vault where the deed books were, and basically it smelled of old paper and cigarettes. And I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to spend their whole career looking at books. None of it appealed to me.”

So he took an entirely different path, earning a first responder certification, then taking classes at the local technical school in Swainsboro and receiving an emergency medical technician (EMT) certificate while he was still a junior in high school.

“When I turned 18, I was fully qualified to be an EMT, so I started driving the ambulance to figure out if I could deal with the blood and guts of medical school, or being a doctor,” Cadle said. “So I stayed home after high school graduation, worked as an EMT, and earned an associates degree at East Georgia College because I had a good job and was able to live at home before transferring to the University of Georgia.”

Despite graduating cum laude with a biology degree, Cadle said he “just kind of decided not to go to medical school,” and his career path changed direction.

“My dad always told me not to be a broke doctor, so I got a master’s degree in accounting,” he said, “which allowed me to stay at the University of Georgia for a couple of extra football seasons.” But Cadle said two years working as an accountant was enough to cause another career turn, this one permanent.

“I’m sitting there typing numbers into a spreadsheet and thinking, ‘This is not for me,’” he said. “I wasn’t really doing the kinds of things I wanted to do.” So he and his wife Leslie decided to embark on legal careers. They were both accepted into the law schools at the University of Mississippi and Mercer University.

“We wanted to stay in Georgia, so that’s how we wound up in Macon,” Cadle said.

“And I had figured out by then that you didn’t have to sit in the records room in the Emanuel County Courthouse to be a lawyer. There were a lot of different things you could do to be a lawyer.”

What Cadle did after graduating from Mercer Law in 2007 was join the firm of Baker Donelson as an associate in its Macon office.

In 2015, he was promoted to shareholder and new litigator associate adviser. This year, he became the firm’s office managing shareholder for its Atlanta and Macon offices. His practice is focused on business litigation in the areas of real estate, eminent domain, land use, zoning and conservation easements.

“I think business litigation is fascinating because everything that comes to you is a little different,” he said. “Each piece of property is unique and all have their interesting issues and interesting histories and that sort of thing. I find that change and variety to be fun

and engaging.”

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Asked how much time he spends in the Atlanta office versus the Macon office, Cadle replied, “It kind of varies by week, honestly. My law practice is statewide, so it just depends on where I need to be that day.”

He is the third Baker Donelson shareholder to serve as State Bar president in the past three decades, following Linda Klein in 1997-98 and Charles “Buck” Ruffin in 2013-14. Cadle’s Bar leadership path dates back to the first Annual Meeting he attended, in 2008 after the encouragement of a colleague.

“Carl Varnedoe told me about the Annual Meetings and how he really enjoyed going to them,” Cadle said. “The firm would support you in leadership, so he said I should run for YLD state rep for Macon. I ran for state rep at a pool party at Amelia Island at the Sandcastle Villas, and I won and have been going to Bar meetings ever since.”

Before his ascent up the State Bar officers’ ladder—serving as secretary, treasurer and president-elect over the past three years—Cadle represented the Macon Judicial Circuit on the Board of Governors, served on the Executive Committee and chaired the Eminent Domain Section. He is a past president of the Macon Bar Association and past president of the American Inn of Court, William Augustus Bootle Chapter.

He is also a mediator and registered neutral with the Georgia Commission on Dispute Resolution. Additionally, he teaches accounting for lawyers as an adjunct professor at Mercer University Walter F. George School of Law. He remains a certified public accountant.

An aviation enthusiast with a multi-engine commercial certificate with an instrument rating, Cadle listed flying airplanes as one of his favorite out-of-the-office activities, along with golf, yard work and traveling—“which is really flying airplanes,” he noted—with his wife, Leslie Cadle, who is an estate planning and probate lawyer with Smith Hawkins Hollingsworth & Reeves LLP in Macon and a frequent attendee at Bar meetings.

To witness Cadle presiding over a Board of Governors meeting is to believe that professional leadership and enjoying camaraderie among fellow Bar members with an ever-cheerful demeanor is something that comes naturally for him.

“It seems to be,” Cadle agreed with a chuckle. “I think lawyers are fascinating. Because of our training, we are an interesting combination of generalists and specialists. That training and life experience seems to make us look at things critically, both from our perspective and the perspective of our clients and our community. I think we have a lot of opportunity as a profession to do good and to continue doing good to better our profession and our service to the public.”

Along with Leslie, the new president has been joined regularly at Bar meetings since 2021 by his dad, who had eschewed Bar activities since the beginning of his career. That was because when Jerry Cadle graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law and returned to Swainsboro in 1975, the local newspaper published an article and photo on the opening of his law practice.

“Less than three weeks later,” Ivy explained, “my dad had a letter from the Bar, admonishing him for advertising. He was very active in the community and was a great role model of what community involvement looked like, but he had nothing to do with the State Bar until I got into leadership. There was an open seat for the Board of Governors, and he figured out that coming to these meetings was fun and interesting and he would get to see a bunch of people he already knew. I was there to meet people; he wound up coming to see people he already knew. He found that enjoyable and rewarding, and now we enjoy getting to go to meetings together.”

Much more, at least for Ivy, than that initial visit to the courthouse records room.

Linton Johnson

Media Consultant

State Bar of Georgia

[email protected]