Supreme Court Justice Sharon Lee grew up in the small East Tennessee town of Madisonville. Her elementary school was a short walk from the Monroe County Courthouse where her mother worked, so the courthouse became the unofficial “daycare center.”

She was always interested in the law, but there weren’t any women lawyers in Madisonville, and there were very few in the entire country. Even though her uncle was a lawyer and her mother was clerk and master, Lee never saw herself as a lawyer.

“In high school, I did well in science, so everyone encouraged me to pursue a medical career. I went to Vanderbilt University as a pre-med major and volunteered as a candy striper at Vanderbilt Hospital.” She says she lasted about 30 minutes before realizing medicine was not her calling. The hospital environment was not what she’d expected.

June 15, 2023. TBA Annual Convention, Knoxville. Justice Lee with friends and Drowota Award nominators, from left: Dawn Coppock, Shelley Ward, Lee, Charla Sherbakoff, Stephanie Slater and Judy Cornett.

Lee transferred back home to the University of Tennessee to get a degree in business and discovered she enjoyed accounting because it was orderly and balanced. “A friend of mine said, ‘You know, my husband is a CPA and I don’t really see you as an accountant. Are you sure that’s what you want to do?’ I wasn’t sure, so I thought law school might be a good fallback choice.”

As soon as she got into law school at UT, though, she knew she’d made the right decision. “I enjoyed my classes, reading the cases and friends I made in law school. I was disappointed, however, that I didn’t seem to be learning ‘law.’ I thought I would be memorizing ‘the law and rules,’ similar to accounting procedures.”

She says it took her a while to realize she was learning to think, which was much more difficult than memorization.

Supreme Court, 2014-2016. Chief Justice Sharon G. Lee, seated, with Justices Holly Kirby, Jeff Bivins, Roger Page and Connie Clark

From Small Town Lawyer to the Highest Court in the State

Lee’s uncle, J.D. Lee, a former president of the American Trial Lawyers Association, was so excited about her decision to enter law school that he put her on his payroll when she started at UT. “At the end of my first week, I received an unsolicited check in the mail from his office for $50,” Lee recalls.

“That’s when I realized I was his law clerk.”

She worked full-time in the summers for her uncle and part-time writing briefs and doing legal research for him during her three years of law school. After graduating and passing the bar, Lee returned to Madisonville to practice law with him, thinking that would be the only job she would ever have.

She worked with her uncle for a little over a year before opening her own office as a general practitioner. “I realized that my uncle’s style of law practice was not what I wanted. He had a successful personal injury practice. He loved what he did, and I learned a lot from him, but I wanted a practice that I had more control over with a wider diversity of cases. It was a difficult decision to leave his office, but I knew it was best for me.”

Over the next 25 years, Lee was a general practitioner handling divorces, property disputes, estates, personal injury cases, criminal cases including a capital murder case, and drafting deeds and wills. She wound up having a very broad range of experience. “I never regretted the decision to be a small-town general practitioner,” she says. “I enjoyed the diversity of my practice.”

Lee also served as city attorney for Vonore and Madisonville and as the county attorney for Monroe County, in addition to being involved in her community including serving as PTA president and lay leader of her church.

In 2004, she was encouraged to apply to fill a vacancy on the Court of Appeals. “Two judges in my district came to me separately to say that there would be a vacancy on the court and that I should apply. There were 13 really good applicants in 2004 and I really didn’t think I had a chance.”

Appointed by Gov. Phil Bredesen to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, Lee held the distinction of being the first woman to serve on the Eastern Section of the court in its 79-year history. She remained there for four years until a vacancy opened up on the Tennessee Supreme Court with Justice William M. Barker’s retirement in 2008. “When I went into the interview with Gov. Bredesen about the Supreme Court vacancy, he said, ‘What is it, you don’t like the first job I gave you?’ I said that I liked it very much, but I thought I might like this one a little better.”  With Lee’s appointment, the Supreme Court had a female-majority for the first time in the state’s history.

Throughout her time as a jurist, Lee “never forgot her roots as a solo practitioner in East Tennessee,” states Justice Sarah Campbell. “She is especially mindful of how the court’s actions will affect attorneys in the trenches.”

Rodd Barckhoff, a former Supreme Court staff attorney, agrees, saying, “In our conversations and discussions, I learned that Justice Lee’s years of experience as a lawyer in private practice informed her questions and analysis as a jurist. Her concern for how decisions affected the practice of law for Tennessee lawyers and access to justice for Tennessee citizens was paramount.”

Jan. 15, 2011. Justice Lee and Gov. Bill Haslam on his inauguration day

Tech Changes Everything

Since her appointment to the Supreme Court in 2008, Lee has witnessed numerous changes in the way the court does business, the biggest one being the increased use of technology for more efficiency. “We have e-filing in the appellate courts now, and improved case management,” she says. “I have everything I need on my laptop, from the briefs filed in the case to the entire record.”

It’s a great benefit for the attorneys, too, to be able to file from their home or office. “When I was practicing and needed to file an appellate brief, it was a two-hour round trip to the courthouse in Knoxville. The time savings is tremendous, especially for rural lawyers.”

Livestreaming has also played a big role in how the courts have changed in the nearly 20 years since Lee was appointed. “Because of COVID-19, from April 2020 to June 2022 we did our dockets remotely via Zoom. We were able to livestream oral arguments and we stayed current on our dockets. Now all court arguments are livestreamed and we are recording 1,000-plus views, so the transparency of the court proceedings is a great benefit for the court.”

Lee is also not afraid to use social media to make the courts and the legal system more accessible to the public. An early adopter on Twitter, she now has more than 3,000 followers and posts items nearly every day, celebrating the good work of lawyers and judges, promoting pro bono events, offering support to women in the profession and promoting upcoming oral arguments to boost interest in cases.

Justice Lee is sworn in to the Court of Appeals by Gov. Phil Bredesen

Impactful Rulings

Since joining the court, Lee has also had an impact on some of the major cases that have come before the body, both in the majority opinions she has authored and in some of her dissents. Supreme Court Staff Attorney Lisa Rippy-McGuffey says, “I admire her willingness to tackle tough issues with intellectual honesty, even when doing so leads to an unpopular result.” Two cases in particular come to mind for Lee, though she says that it’s hard to choose because the court hears such a wide variety of cases.

First is the 2022 decision in State of Tennessee v. Booker, which holds that Tennessee’s mandatory life sentence when imposed on a juvenile homicide offender, without consideration of age or other circumstances, violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

“It’s a very important decision for juvenile homicide offenders,” she says. Before the ruling, Tennessee had the harshest mandatory sentence for juvenile homicide offenders. With the Booker decision, Tennessee joined 36 other states that allow for parole eligibility in less than 35 years.

Second, Lee says that the 2020 decision in Effler et. al. v Purdue Pharma et. al. opened the door to recovery for persons injured by drug use. “Tennessee has a very high rate of opioid abuse; it’s very prevalent in East Tennessee, and I think that was a very important case.” The ruling allows that the Tennessee Drug Dealer Liability Act (TDDLA) covers commercial drug companies, and individuals affected by addiction can now sue them for damages. Attorneys general can sue on behalf of innocent victims, such as the Baby Does named in the case who were born addicted to opioids.

“Mimi” and her grandchildren, Shep Gregg, Julia and Grace Chermely

Dissents That Sparked Debate

Lee says she has written plenty of dissents that she felt were important. “They didn’t change the law, but they raised certain issues for discussion.”

Chief Justice Roger Page says that Lee “has a knack for asking a question that makes issues much easier to understand. She always made my opinions better even when she did not agree with me.”

In 2016’s Carrington decision, she wrote a dissenting opinion stating that an indigent parent in a termination of parental rights case should should have not only the right to counsel, but the right to effective assistance of counsel: if an attorney fails to provide adequate representation, the parent should have the opportunity to seek relief.

In McClay v. Airport Services Management, Lee disagreed with her colleagues about the cap on noneconomic damages in personal injury lawsuits and that it fails to consider the extent of a party’s noneconomic losses, thus being an invasion of the right to trial by jury. She asserts that “the cap on noneconomic damages has been a significant change in the law in the arena of personal injury lawsuits.”

Oct. 27, 2008. Tennessee Supreme Court Historical Society Dinner. Tennessee Supreme Court Justices Connie Clark and Cissy Daughtrey, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Tennessee Supreme Court Justices Janice Holder, Sharon Lee and Penny White.

Administrative Matters and the Fun Parts of the Job

In addition to rulings, Justice Lee is proud of her administrative accomplishments. During her time as chief justice, she oversaw the implementation of the Davidson County Business Court Project. She says it is a highly effective way to resolve business conflicts and ultimately benefits employees. “Our goal was to provide effective and efficient ways to handle those complex commercial cases.”

In a September 2015 Journal article introducing the Business Court concept, Lee said that a business court is a proven way to produce quicker resolutions with reduced litigation costs and greater predictability and consistency of decisions.

According to the Business Court’s website, since 2015, 145 cases have requested transfer to the specialized docket with litigants ranging from large, national companies to small businesses. In 2018, the pilot project was awarded a grant to develop and implement a training curriculum to assist in expanding business court dockets to other areas of the state and to assist other states in creating their own business court dockets.

It is a valuable tool for economic development and business retention — which she says means more jobs for Tennesseans.

Another project was the creation of the Indigent Representation Task Force led by Nashville School of Law Dean Bill Koch. The 2017 Task Force Report recommended a number of changes to the indigent system, including the establishment of an appellate public defender division. The division was established a few years later.

Lee says that one of the greatest parts of serving on the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court has been the opportunities she’s had and the friendships she has made. One fond memory she recalled was “in 2016, TBA President Bill Harbison and I issued a joint proclamation announcing Tennessee Seersucker Day and encouraged lawyers to wear seersucker to the annual convention. We awarded prizes for best seersucker, best father/son pair, things like that. It was great fun.” Their proclamation reads, in part, “in the immortal words of Joseph Haspel, ‘Hot is hot, no matter what you do for a living,’  and the wearing of seersucker has been known to cool tempers and promote great civility among lawyers.”

State Seersucker Day 2016, TBA Annual Convention

Resisting Political Machinations

In 2014, there was a partisan campaign to defeat three justices, including Justice Lee, in a retention election. All three justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. Tennessee lawyers of both parties stepped up and pushed back. It was an ill-fated effort, and the three justices were retained.

“The bench and bar really came together for a common purpose,” Lee says. “It was so gratifying to see the level of support we had from people who put aside their political views and their differences to do what was right for the judiciary.”

She says the process gave people a civics lesson on the court and on what they do, and that effort affirmed the importance of an independent judiciary.

Work to Be Done

Lee feels there is still work to be done around compensation for lawyers who do indigent defense. “The 2017 Indigent Defense Task Force Report recommended many improvements to the system, including an increase in compensation. As a lawyer, I handled many appointed cases at low rates. I know firsthand the hardship it places on lawyers and the need to pay counsel a fair rate. Lawyers provide valuable services to indigent defendants. We do not pay counsel enough. I hope that compensation rates can be increased. The court doesn’t control the funding; it’s set by the legislature, so I hope that there are continued efforts to change the compensation rate.”

Awards, Accolades and Community Service

Lee was awarded the 2023 Justice Frank F. Drowota III Outstanding Judicial Service Award at the TBA Convention in Knoxville. The award is given to a judge or judicial branch official of a court in Tennessee who has demonstrated extraordinary devotion and dedication to the improvement of the law, our legal system and the administration of justice as exemplified by the career of Justice Drowota.

In her acceptance speech, Lee recalled being sworn in as a justice on the Supreme Court. “I didn’t have a robe yet, of course, so they told me to go back to the robing room and find one that fit.” The winning robe happened to be none other than Justice Drowota’s.

Throughout her career, Lee has championed women in the law, serving as a role model for many young women interested in the law and as a mentor for those who are building their practice. Her colleague on the Supreme Court, Justice Holly Kirby says, “Justice Lee and I often appear together at events for women. She always offers warm encouragement for women considering seeking positions of influence, especially the judiciary, and reaches back to acknowledge women who encouraged her in the past.”

Lee has shown dedication to legal principles, a love of the law, humility, respect for those appearing before the courts, and a recognition that cases involve not only legal issues and concepts, but real problems that impact real people’s lives. She is often described as a “Justice for the People.”

Lee’s assistant, Shelley Ward, recalls, “I was told by an attorney friend before I started this journey with Justice Lee that she was the same person on the bench as she was off the bench. I can certainly attest to the truthfulness of this description. To say Justice Lee is remarkable is an understatement. Whether she is hearing oral arguments or researching and writing opinions; whether she is serving as liaison to various boards and commissions or mentoring up and coming lawyers; whether she is speaking to a group of elementary school students or as the keynote speaker at a college commencement, Justice Lee has tirelessly given her all.”

On the bench with granddaughters Grace and Julia

What’s Next

Lee says she is intentional about balancing work and her personal life, though she admits it is often a struggle. “Grandchildren give you great perspective on life.” Her 8-year-old granddaughters who live in Knoxville have “Friday Fun Nights at Mimi’s” most weekends, and her 3-year-old grandson in Beaufort, South Carolina gets lots of FaceTime calls.

Lee says she is purposely not making any plans for about six months after she officially retires on Aug. 31. “I am focused on finishing strong and once Aug. 31 rolls around, I’ll start thinking about what I want to do.”

If her time on the bench is any indication, Justice Sharon Lee will likely continue to support women in the law and access to justice … but also leave time for fun, maybe even enlisting those grandchildren to help promote “State Seersucker Day” across the country. |||