One of my areas of specialization as a lawyer is employment discrimination. I get about 1o calls a week from recently fired employees who feel like they've been treated unfairly. After I listen to their story, I usually agree that they were treated unfairly, but I have to explain to them that unfair treatment is not necessarily against the law.

One of the most common things I say to potential clients goes as follows: "In Georgia, there are very few protections for employees. Your employer can fire you for any reason - or no reason at all - as long as it was not based on your age, race, sex, religion or a disability. You can be fired just because your boss doesn't like you. I know what happened to you doesn't seem fair, but it was not illegal."

Occasionally, the potential client is able to tell me facts that seem to make out a pretty good case for discrimination based on one of the factors I mentioned earlier. I would say that about 1 in every 20 callers has facts that justify further investigation by my office. Only about 1 in every 50 turn into good cases worth pursuing, and I am happy to do that for them.