Built for
the courtroom.

Jackie “The Fly Lawyer” Patterson has spent more than four decades inside Georgia’s justice system — and he has stood on every side of it. He served his country as a U.S. Army paratrooper at Fort Bragg from 1978 to 1981, then patrolled the streets of Atlanta as a police officer from 1981 to 1987. He has been a certified Georgia Peace Officer since 1981.

He earned a B.S. in Criminal Justice and Public Administration and a Master of Public Administration from Brenau College, his Juris Doctor from Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law, and a Master of Laws from Atlanta Law School. He was sworn in as a Georgia attorney in 1992 and has never looked back: more than 1,400 felony and misdemeanor jury trials and more than 250 appeals across the State of Georgia, including the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys’ 2003 Case of the Year for John Geng v. State before the Georgia Supreme Court.

What sets Jackie apart is that he built that record while continuing to serve the system he now defends clients against. He ran the Clark Atlanta University Police Department as its chief in 1995–1996. From 2000 to 2020 he sat as a part-time judge in the Superior Court of Terrell County, the State Courts of DeKalb and Rockdale Counties, and the Municipal Courts of Atlanta, East Point, and Greenville. From 2020 to 2022 he served as a part-time prosecutor for Fulton County — all while practicing law. He has taught criminal procedure to newly appointed judges at the University of Georgia, is a graduate of the National College of DUI Defense at Harvard, and is admitted to practice before the Georgia Supreme Court, the Georgia Court of Appeals, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Cop, chief, judge, prosecutor — he knows exactly how the other side builds a case because he has been the other side. When the State comes after you, you want the one attorney who has worn every uniform in the room and knows where every case falls apart.