Published 11:45 am Thursday, September 3, 2026 By Dean Poling, The Valdosta Daily Times The late Edith Smith, The Valdosta Daily Times one-time bookkeeper and receptionist, would tell new staffers if they ever got into legal trouble, get Converse Bright. Smith passed away more than 20 years ago but South Georgians are still getting Converse Bright. People can get the long-time Valdosta attorney’s book, “Courtroom Stories” through local publisher Snake Nation Press. Bright pens about three dozens essays chronicling his half-century of practicing law. He shares these stories with insight into the law, a dry sense of humor and a storyteller’s gift of narrative. Each story is only a few pages long. He tells stories from his long career, from defending a woman who killed her violent lover, the jury foreman who found a man guilty at his first trial but changed his mind observing the second trial after the introduction of new evidence, the day Bright represented the plaintiff and defendants in two separate but almost identical cases with a federal judge warning him he’d better settle one of these cases, how a suspect stole money from the police to pay his fine and how the receipt for this payment later proved police wrongly held him and beat him for two days. Several of the cases in “Courtroom Stories” were covered at the time by local media but Bright gives readers a peek into the back stories of these cases. He never brags about his abilities in these pages but an astute reader…
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