On January 1, 1980, Sam Harben and Phil Hartley formed the Gainesville, Georgia law firm of Harben & Hartley. At that time, they represented three local boards of education in Georgia. School law was barely recognized as a unique area of law, but changes were coming from the state and federal governments. Only five years earlier, the General Assembly of Georgia had passed the Fair Dismissal Act, providing certain procedural rights for contracted employees and a new concept called “tenure” for public school teachers. In the same year, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act and a brand new set of legal issues relating to the education of a subset of students was created.

Harben & Hartley now limits its practice to the representation of local school boards and other educational entities. It serves as general counsel for the Georgia School Boards Association and works cooperatively with a number of other professional education associations in the state. The authors and their firm have served as lead counsel in representing school districts in many of the leading cases in school law in Georgia. They currently represent, in some capacity, over 100 local school boards and other educational entities in the state.

In addition to their work as attorneys and advocates for public school boards, the authors also conduct numerous training sessions for school board members, school board chairs, new school board members, superintendents, school administrators and other educators on all aspects of school law. At the national level, they participate through the National Council of School Board Attorneys, where Harben serves on the Executive Committee, and both authors attend and participate in national conferences on a regular basis. They have written extensively on legal issues in public education for a number of publications. Through these efforts and the countless hours the authors and members of the firm spend in telephone conversations and meetings with school board members, superintendents and administrators, the firm seeks to assist school districts in avoiding costly and time-consuming litigation or, where that is impossible, ensuring that the positions and policies of the boards of education and superintendents prevail when challenged.