By the Journal Staff

In conjunction with TJC, TTLA and TLAW

Given by Tennessee Bar Association at Mid-Winter Meeting
Access to Justice Awards honor good works
The Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) presented the 2002 Access to Justice Awards at its Mid-Winter meeting Jan. 18 in Nashville.

Law Student Volunteer Awards
Shawn Caster of Nashville and Stephen Ross Johnson of Knoxville were awarded the Law Student Volunteer Awards. These awards recognize Tennessee law school students who have provided outstanding volunteer services while working with an organization that provides legal representation to the indigent.

A single mother of a medically fragile son, Caster was once a client of attorneys at the Tennessee Justice Center (TJC). In the words of TJC attorney Michelle Johnson, Caster was motivated to attend law school because she "didn't think children should need lawyers to get the medical care their doctors prescribe." Caster applied to Vanderbilt, but was put on the waiting list. Determined to attend law school, she drove six hours every day to UT Knoxville, studying and caring for her son in the evenings. The following summer, she interned at TJC, the same organization that had helped her son years before. She was admitted into Vanderbilt the following fall and will graduate from there this spring. She plans to pursue a career in public interest law.

Johnson is a student at the University of Tennessee College of Law where he lead the creation of the Tennessee Innocence Project, a program involving student volunteers in death penalty cases. He has also served for two years as the co-director of the UT Pro Bono Project and has clerked at the Southern Center for Human Rights.

Public Service Award
Memphis Assistant Public Defender Garland Erguden was awarded the Public Service Award. This award is given to an attorney who has provided dedicated and outstanding service while employed by an organization that is primarily engaged in providing legal representation to the poor. Erguden has an outstanding record of service as a public defender, but commitment to the cause of equal justice extends beyond just her job as a civil servant. In the past year, while working as a full-time public defender, she has taken 10 pro bono domestic cases and provided pro bono appellate services to the Memphis CASA program, one case going to the Tennessee Supreme Court.

Harris A. Gilbert Pro Bono Award
Knoxville attorney J. Myers Morton was awarded the Harris A. Gilbert Pro Bono Award. The Gilbert Award recognizes a private bar attorney who has contributed a significant amount of pro bono work and has demonstrated dedication to the development and delivery of legal services to the poor. The award is named after Gilbert, a Nashville attorney and past TBA president who exemplified this type of commitment.

During the past year, Morton has donated more than 150 hours of time to the Knoxville Pro Bono Program and currently has 30 open cases referred through this organization along with several additional pro bono cases taken directly from his clients. Many of these cases are extremely complex and in the words of past Harris Gilbert Award recipient, Terry Woods, "the average lawyer would consider handling any one of these cases to satisfy their pro bono duties for an entire year." He is a dedicated volunteer in the Knoxville "Saturday Bar" program and a member of the Pro Bono Project Advisory Board.

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Senior Lawyer Tribute good way for local associations to preserve history
Gibson County Bar Association sets good example

Judge James Webb saw the Tennessee Bar Foundation's video, "Tennessee Legal Traditions 2001" three times. "I enjoyed it more the third time," he says, "and I thought, why don't we just do this live?" Webb is a member of the Gibson County Bar Association and had a vision that what the Tennessee Bar Foundation (TBF) had done on a statewide level, the local bar could do right there in Gibson County.

So Webb started planning for the Senior Lawyer Tribute, a dinner that featured senior members of the bar remembering what it was like to practice law then and now.

Four lawyers were chosen to be honored: Jerry Flippin of Milan, Griffin Boyte of Humboldt, and J.C. Nowell and Tommy Harwood, both of Trenton. Webb borrowed some questions from TBF Executive Director Barri Bernstein and set about interviewing each honoree in advance.

"The key was the moderator, who is our circuit judge (Clayburn Peeples)," Webb said. "I had pre-interviewed each one for about an hour and a half and gave that information to our moderator."

They also had another good idea, which was to invite families, county officials, secretaries and paralegals and at about 75, they had about twice as many attending as they'd expected.

"This is something that local bar associations should do, especially rural bars," Webb says. "It was put together pretty simply. And it will preserve their own local legal heritage. Local bars can do this as a social event."

Webb has offered to put together instructions for any bar that is interested. For more information about viewing "Tennessee Legal Traditions 2001," call Barri Bernstein at (615) 242-1531, (800) 634-2516 or email tnbarfdtn@aol.com

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Tennessee Youth Court program selects advisory board

The Tennessee Youth Court program selected a group of leaders during its inaugural meeting at the Tennessee Bar Center Jan. 8.

The 21 board members present selected Davidson County Juvenile Court Referee Mike O'Neil as chair, Paige Kisber of Nashville as vice chair, Patrick Carter of Columbia as secretary and Terry Napier of Bristol as treasurer.

Napier, a lieutenant with the Briston Police Department, was fundamental in starting a teen court in his city, and Carter was involved in teen courts while in law school at the University of Florida. Kisber is with the University of Tennessee Center for Government Training.

The board will soon form committees and begin working with Youth Court coordinator Anjanette Eash to provide guidance and plan teen courts across the state.

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Law school scholarships available from ABA

If you know a racial or ethnic minority student who would like to go to law school, look into the American Bar Association Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund. The fund is intended to "encourage racial and ethnic minority students to apply to law school and to provide financial assistance."

The scholarship fund will award $5,000 of financial assistance annually to each recipient attending an ABA-accredited law school. Recipients will be selected based on qualifications and not the law school they plan to attend.

Completed applications must be postmarked no later than March 1. Download an application at http://www.abanet.org/fje

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Legal Services Corporation urges consolidation

Legal services programs in East and Middle Tennessee reorganize

The state's leading organizations providing civil legal representation to the poor underwent major changes in early January as five legal services agencies merged into two new programs: Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands (LASMTC) and Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET).

The mergers follow a national trend of consolidation among legal services programs and came at the urging of the Legal Services Corporation, which provides the single largest source of funding for most programs.

LASMTC takes over the service areas of the former Rural Legal Aid in Oak Ridge and Cookeville, Legal Services of South Central Tennessee in Columbia and Tullahoma and Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee in Nashville. LAET represents a merger of Knoxville Legal Aid and Legal Services of Upper East Tennessee in Johnson City. LAET will also have a presence in Chattanooga and will receive federal funding from the Legal Services Corporation for the Chattanooga area. West Tennessee Legal Services and Memphis Area Legal Services are unaffected by the mergers, and Southeast Tennessee Legal Services in Chattanooga will continue to operate as a non-LSC funded entity.

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Court seeking comment

Proposed changes for foreign language court interpreters

The Tennessee Supreme Court is considering the adoption of rules to establish a code of professional responsibility and standards for spoken foreign language court interpreters. Various TBA entities will review these proposals and may recommend that the ûBA comment on behalf of the bar. You can see the proposed Code of Professional Responsibility on TBALink at http://www.tba.org/rules/proposedftprof.html and the proposed Standards at http://www.tba.org/rules/proposedflstandards.html Comments should be made by March 15 to: Rebecca S. Montgomery, senior staff attorney, Administrative Office of the Courts, 511 Union St., Suite 600, Nashville, TN 37219.

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Tennessee Bar Association files revisions to proposed ethics rules

The Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) filed a revised version of its proposed new ethics rules with the Tennessee Supreme Court on Dec. 3. These revisions and responses follow months of comments by the bench, bar, and public on the TBA's proposals that were filed in October 2000, after five years of study, consultation, and work from the TBA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, formerly known as the Committee for the Study of Standards of Professional Conduct.

The TBA's proposed rules are patterned after the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct, versions of which have now been adopted in 44 American jurisdictions. The TBA's proposed rules follow the ABA Model Rules, but include some modifications reflecting particular Tennessee practices, statutory law, and established decisions.

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Actions from the Board of Professional Responsibility

Disbarred

Charles H. Brown, a former Clarksville attorney, has been disbarred from the practice of law in this state by order entered Dec. 13, 2001.

Brown misappropriated client funds, failed to communicate with clients, neglected client matters and failed to respond to the Board of Professional Responsibility regarding multiple complaints of misconduct. Brown had been temporarily suspended since Jan. 7, 2000.

Brown failed to file answers to any petitions for discipline and failed to appear at the hearing in his disciplinary case. The hearing panel of the Board of Professional Responsibility recommended Brown be disbarred and he did not appeal.

Suspended

Jennifer A. Jenson, a Memphis lawyer, was temporarily suspended from the practice of law by the Tennessee Supreme Court filed on Dec. 14, 2001, based on a petition alleging she misappropriated entrusted funds to her own use and poses a substantial threat of irreparable harm to the public.

Jenson was precluded from accepting any new clients after Dec. 14, 2001, and from representing existing clients since Jan. 14. She is required to deposit all fees, client funds and funds due third parties that are tendered to her during the suspension period in her trust account, and she is enjoined from making any withdrawals from this trust account unless approved in writing by disciplinary counsel.

Finally, the court ordered that if Jenson requests dissolution or modification of the suspension, she must furnish a complete audit report by a title insurance company of her trust account and all of her real estate closing files opened since the beginning of 1999 to show that she has properly paid all amounts due third parties and clients that were previously entrusted to her, and that she has completed all of her responsibilities as closing attorney.

Jenson may not use any indicia of lawyer, legal assistant, or law clerk nor maintain a presence where the practice of law is conducted. She must notify by registered or certified mail all clients of pending matters, co-counsel and opposing counsel of her suspension and return any paper or property to clients.

Samuel L. Perkins, a Memphis lawyer, was suspended from the practice of law by order filed Oct. 29. The suspension was for a period of 45 days, beginning Oct. 15 through Nov. 29. Perkins submitted a conditional guilty plea.

Perkins neglected clients' cases, failed to move with reasonable diligence and promptness and did not keep his clients reasonably informed about the status of their legal matters. He also failed to properly supervise a former member of his support staff who created attorney-client relationships with clients without his knowledge, and who handled virtually all telephone and mail communications with his clients. This former employee also gave clients false and fraudulent court dates, forged his signature to correspondence and pleadings, accepted fees, and prepared certain legal documents, all without Perkins' knowledge. Perkins' discharge of the former employee, his prompt corrective action taken to conclude the clients' cases after disciplinary complaints were filed, and his refund of fees in matters that he did not desire to handle, were considered mitigating in his case.

The court also required Perkins to complete the board's ethics workshop (which he did), and to obtain and provide to disciplinary counsel a law office practice assessment report from his monitor by Nov. 29, the purpose of which was to help him in the areas of ensuring proper delegation of tasks to his support staff and ensuring such staff do not act in matters requiring the professional judgment of a lawyer, calendaring, docket control, moving with reasonable promptness and improving his communication with clients.

Perkins was able to resume the practice of law without conditions beginning on Nov. 30, 2001.

Information regarding these disciplinary actions was obtained from the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Tennessee Supreme Court.

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BPR Report shows number of complaints down in 2001

The Board of Professional Responsibility's recently released annual report shows that the number of complaints it received this past year was down from 2000. For its 2001 fiscal year, which ran through Oct. 31, 2001, the board received 1,397 complaints, compared to 1,499 received in 2000. That's a drop of almost 7 percent. The largest number of complaints came from Shelby County (396), followed by Davidson County (268) and Knox County (136). In response to complaints, the board issued 8 disbarments, 15 suspensions, 26 public censures, 38 private reprimands, 55 private admonitions. Two attorneys were made inactive because of disability.

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 Information regarding these disciplinary actions was obtained from the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Tennessee Supreme Court.