In part because of their own political connections, state Rep. David Dreyer (D-Grant Park) and Michael Sterling, who was the top adviser to former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, are already taking on headline-grabbing cases involving politicos and celebrities as well as handling business litigation at their new boutique, Dreyer Sterling.

“We are standing up for people who have been wronged, whether they are popular or unpopular,” Sterling said. “Our core value, as far as the cases we pick, is the pursuit of justice.”

Dreyer Sterling, launched late last fall, is representing state Sen. Nikema Williams, who was just elected the first black woman to head the Georgia Democratic Party, after her arrest by Capitol police during a “Count Every Vote” demonstration in the Gold Dome on the first day of a November special session.

The charges against her, obstruction of an officer and disrupting the General Assembly, have not yet been dropped, even though legislators are supposed to be immune from arrest. That's because Fulton County Solicitor General Keith Gammage has recused himself, Sterling said, and sent Williams' case to the Georgia Attorney General's Office.

“We continue to proclaim her innocence on the criminal charges and explore options for a civil suit,” he added.

Sterling won an acquittal for the district attorney of Hinds County, Mississippi, Robert Smith, on a robbery charge in a three-day trial last fall. The jury couldn't reach a verdict on a related aggravated stalking charge. Both charges stemmed from a 2015 incident where Smith took an ex-girlfriend's gun from her after they got in an argument and then left with it.

Since the acquittal, Sterling said, he's “been getting calls from politicians and political aides who find themselves in a little bit of trouble.”

For instance, Sterling, a former federal prosecutor, is also defending a former top aide to Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, Desiree Peterkin Bell, who faces corruption charges for allegedly misusing money from the Mayor's Fund for Philadelphia, a city nonprofit.

On the celebrity front, the new partners are representing William Stewart, ex-husband of actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish, in a $1 million suit Stewart brought against Haddish, her publisher Simon & Schuster and ghostwriter Tucker Max for defamation and libel.

In her best-selling memoir, “The Last Unicorn,” Haddish, while not naming Stewart, alleged he'd abused her, in a chapter titled “The Ex-Husband.” Since the book came out last year, Sterling said, Stewart has been deluged with angry calls and messages from Haddish's fans.

“We did a lot of due diligence, reviewing documents and recordings, before taking the case, and we think it's worth taking on,” Dreyer said.

Meanwhile, the attorneys continue to represent Asante McGee, one of singer R. Kelly's accusers, who described the performer's “sexual intimidation, emotional abuse and controlling behavior” in the Lifetime documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly,” which aired earlier in January.

Different Backgrounds

Dreyer, who is white, and Sterling, who is black, want their new firm's culture to be diverse as the cases they take.

Their first associate hire, Rohini Mukherjee, fits their polyglot approach. Mukherjee earned her J.D. from Emory University last year after practicing law in India for the Solicitor General of India's office and as a central government attorney for the Supreme Court of India.

“We want to develop a firm where anyone who brings merit to the table is welcome,” Sterling said.

To keep things fair, he added, they flipped a coin to decide whose name would go first for their new firm. Dreyer won the toss.

Sterling, 37, started out at Sidley Austin in Chicago, after graduating at the top of his law school class at Texas Southern University—a big move for a kid from Beaumont, Texas.

“A lot of our contemporaries are in work environments that are often tribalistic, where they are required to fit in,” Sterling said. “I did not like having to fit into the culture of Sidley Austin—a firm founded in the 19th century, where, of 600 lawyers, only two percent are African-American.”

After just two years, Sterling landed a job with the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, and then, in 2011, Reed, in his second year as mayor, asked Sterling to become his senior adviser. Reed later asked Sterling to take charge of the city's troubled Workforce Development Agency, which was under federal investigation for fraud and false claims.

Sterling had previously worked for Reed when Reed was in the state Legislature and he was at Morehouse College.

Sterling ran for mayor himself in 2017 but ended up dropping out of the crowded 11-candidate field and returning to law.

“The best thing that ever happened to me was when Michael lost the mayor's race,” Dreyer said.

Dreyer, 44, spent a decade on the corporate defense side at Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Aughtry before jumping to the plaintiffs side in 2017. “I wanted to do more fun stuff,” he said. He joined plaintiffs lawyer Darren Penn, who'd just left Harris Penn Lowry to open his own shop, Penn Law.

He's also starting his second term as a state representative and said his “signature legislation” this session will be reforms to mandate better treatment of women prisoners, such as protecting them from abuse by male guards and ending the practice, common in Georgia prisons, of shackling women while they are giving birth.

Politics to Law Partners

Unsurprisingly, Sterling and Dreyer met through politics.

Dreyer was working with the Grant Park Conservancy to fight Zoo Atlanta's plan for a parking deck in the middle of Grant Park. Instead, the conservancy wanted the city to replace the existing parking lot with a more expensive, semi-underground deck with green space on top, plus a restaurant and performance area to serve as a “living room” for the neighborhood.

Dreyer called Sterling to find out how to get a meeting with the mayor.

“I told him you can't come into the mayor's office and ask him to dribble the ball and dodge defenders down the court. Be prepared and make it easy for him,” Sterling said. “David actually listened. He was far more prepared than the average neighborhood activist.”

The two became friends—and in 2017, the city approved the eco-deck.

“The design benefits the Grant Park neighborhood and respects its history as Atlanta's oldest park,” Reed said at the city of Atlanta press conference announcing the $48 million project, called the Grant Park Gateway.

“It was one of our first working projects together,” Dreyer said. “And knowing the quality of each other's work and character brought us together to start a law firm.”