 Hillyer began a law practice in Lawrenceville, Georgia, but returned to Athens after one year.It was a judicial circuit containing some of the best legal minds of antebellum Georgia, including T.R.R.Cobb and William Hope Hull (founders of the University of Georgia School of Law), Alexander H. Stephens (later Vice President of the Confederate States of America), as well as Robert Toombs (first Confederate States Secretary of State and Brigadier general).