Legal Aid of East Tennessee and the Knoxville Bar Association’s Access to Justice Committee are set to host a Black-Owned Business Legal Advice Clinic on Feb. 16 from 4 to 7 p.m. EST at the Knoxville Area Urban League. The clinic will provide legal guidance for Black-owned business owners to help them navigate legal issues and have the opportunity to meet individually with attorneys to ask questions and seek advice. University of Tennessee College of Law Professor Eric Amarante will start the clinic with a presentation on legal and business issues that affect business ventures and other tips on how to protect and enforce their legal rights. Learn more about the clinic.

Hamilton County lawyer David James Fulton was yesterday publicly censured by the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Fulton filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy documents for a client without having the client sign hard copies of the documents. Fulton then filed eight documents that included his client’s electronic signature. Local Rules for the Bankruptcy Court require the attorney to maintain an original signature for any document electronically signed by the client. Fulton later submitted new filings with the court that did have original signatures. He was sanctioned by the court for these actions, but the client’s bankruptcy was completed.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s latest spending proposal sets aside $92 million for a new juvenile justice campus that would include an expanded courthouse and space for family support services, the Tennessean reports. Juvenile Court Judge Sheila Calloway been pushing for more space since at least 2015. She says the court and its accompanying services have outgrown the current justice center, which has had routine plumbing issues that have resulted in sewage overflow into the staff’s basement workspaces. The new 14-acre "Nashville Youth Campus for Empowerment" would be located on Brick Church Pike and would include larger courtrooms, space for Court Appointed Special Advocates support services, a Metro Nashville Schools student attendance center and private meeting rooms for mediation, attorney-client meetings and therapy sessions. The proposal will need the approval from Metro Council before any money can be spent.

Being a lawyer is the most stressful occupation in the U.S. according to a new analysis from the Washington Post. The Post, using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, looked at a subset of well-being data collected in four American Time Use Surveys between 2010 and 2021. The surveys asked respondents how meaningful their activities were or how happy, sad, stressed, pained and tired they felt on a six-point scale. The industry with the lowest self-reported levels of stress and the highest levels of self-reported happiness was agriculture, logging and forestry. The ABA Journal has a full breakdown of the findings.

The TBA Immigration Law Section will host its annual forum live in Nashville on May 10 from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. CDT. Immigration Section Chair Arléne Amarante, a professor at the Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law, will produce the program, which will offer five hours of general credit. Watch for more details coming soon.

Voting is now underway to help select the third book in the TBA's quarterly book club. Continuing with the theme of race relations and divides, voters will choose between “Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson, “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi or “Memphis” by Tara M. Stringfellow. Cast your vote here by 5 p.m. CST on Friday.

The Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands will hold two clinics next week. On Wednesday, the group will hold a veterans clinic from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Operation Stand Down in Nashville. On Saturday, a general advice clinic will take place at Belmont University, 2005 12th Ave. S., Nashville 37204. All times central. To volunteer for these clinics, contact Kendra Cheek, 615-780-7131. See all January clinics.

A former Cumberland County correctional officer who was forced to resign for taking medicine to treat his opioid use disorder will receive $160,000 in back pay and damages if a judge approves a landmark consent decree, the Associated Press reports. It is the first time the U.S. Department of Justice has used the Americans with Disabilities Act to settle a claim that an employee was discriminated against for taking a prescribed medication to treat drug addiction. Less than a year ago, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division issued guidelines advising that employers, health care providers, law enforcement agencies that operate jails, and others are violating the ADA if they discriminate against people taking prescription medications to treat opioid use disorder. In addition to the back pay and damages, the county has agreed to revise its employment policies and implement training around ADA compliance.

U.S. News & World Report has extended its survey deadline to Jan. 27 following announcements from a multitude of top law school deans that they would be boycotting the annual survey and law school rankings. The ABA Journal reports that it asked all ABA-accredited law schools whether they planned to submit the survey. Out of 110 schools that responded, 25 said they would not participate and 22 were undecided. U.S. News announced changes to its metrics earlier this month and last week informed deans about further modifications, including eliminating employment rates, average debt at graduation and spending on instruction from rankings criteria. Many deans opting out claimed U.S. News relied too much on reputation rankings and spending per student and classified graduates with school-funded fellowships as unemployed.

The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) has parted ways with its top lawyer and inspector general following an independent probe that uncovered errors and poor oversight of the state’s lethal injection protocol, the Tennessean reports. Former TDOC general counsel and deputy commissioner Debra Inglis and former Inspector General Kelly Young were excused on Dec. 27. Bryce Coatney, a deputy general counsel, had previously submitted a notice of resignation in late summer and retired on Dec. 1. Coatney did not work on execution issues during his TDOC tenure, per the TDOC documents. The independent investigation, led by Memphis attorney Edward Stanton, found the state was aware of issues with following its own lethal injection protocol and still chose to move forward with the April execution of Oscar Franklin Smith. Lee intervened at the last minute to stop Smith’s execution. Lee has tasked new department leadership to revise Tennessee's lethal injection protocol.