JIM GILBERT ’68 “I’m still not sure I want to be a lawyer when I grow up,” Jim Gilbert jokes. Yet at age 70, he scoffs at the notion of stepping down from a long career. “I’ll work till I die. It’s really hard for lawyers to retire — I don’t know why.”
In his case, location might have something to do with it. He’s in-house counsel for exclusive, sun-kissed Sea Island, just a few beats of a pelican’s wings from its Golden Isle sister, St. Simons. The resort is home to five-star destinations including the Cloister and the Lodge at Sea Island. But for Gilbert, it’s not always a day at the beach. He deals with employment issues for nearly 2,000 staffers, transportation logistics, and other pressing situations including real estate transactions, fair housing, personal injury and environmental strictures. “One of the primary jobs I have is recognizing problems, then finding the right help to deal with them,” he says, comparing his work to that of a General Practitioner: “It’s like being someone’s family doctor.” His grandfather, O.P. Gilbert, a longtime editor of the Christian Index, graduated from Mercer University, as did all six of O.P.’s sons, including Gilbert’s father, in whose honor Mercer’s James Gilbert Scholarship was created. Other Mercer grads: a great- and a great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side, and literally dozens of his cousins. Oddly enough, though, Jim Gilbert initially enrolled as an undergrad at Duke University and indeed it turned out to be an uncomfortable match. “I was sort of drifting,” he says, “not attending classes.” He left after two years and took a factory job. That’s when Mercer’s then-president Dr. Rufus Harris and its admissions director John Mitchell reached out to him and suggested he return to his family’s academic fold. “The institution,” Gilbert says matter-offactly, “saved my life.” After passing the bar, he joined his father’s and uncle’s law firm, where he practiced until becoming general counsel for Sea Island in 2001. Of his time at the Law School, Gilbert fondly remembers Professors James Rehberg and Leah Chanin, as well as the late Dan Bradley, a classmate who was “as good a friend as I ever had — just another one of the great people Mercer has produced.” (See the spring 2013 issue of Mercer Lawyer for Professor Joe Claxton’s article on Bradley.) Gilbert’s elder son graduated from Mercer Medical School and is a pediatrician in Gainesville, Ga. His daughter is a realtor in Jacksonville, Fla. Both are in their 40s. And he has a young son, Benjamin, turning 16 this fall. “All three of them have great moms,” Gilbert says. They came from two marriages; he’s currently unwed. He calls Benjamin his “Alaska buddy.” They travel twice a year to a “tiny place” he has in the 49th state. Ben is also a gifted guitarist and a concert companion. They’ve gone together to see Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, Weird Al Yankovich, Van Halen, Heart, Jeff Beck. Family and spiritual life are most important to Gilbert — he’s a member of the St. Simons United Methodist Church — but Mercer isn’t far behind. “The Walter F. George School of Law is one of the things for which I’m most grateful in my life,” he says. “I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing without Mercer.… I’d probably still be working in that factory.”
Mercer Lawyer | Fall 2013
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