Todd King’s first thoughts of becoming an attorney can be traced to fifth grade in his South Georgia hometown, Moultrie. His teacher — a very good one, he recalled, who helped him focus his hyperactivity — was Julianne Chambliss, whose husband was a small-town lawyer named Saxby.

When King was an undergraduate student at the University of Georgia, he landed an internship as a law clerk for Saxby Chambliss. This was before Chambliss became a U.S. congressman (1994) and then U.S. senator (2002).