Learn who is leading your TBA Sections and Committees this year. 

Germantown attorney James “Jim” Barry will serve as president of the Tennessee Bar Association in 2023-2024, and Billy Leslie will become the TBA YLD president this June. Read more election results along with information about this year's state Mock Trial Championships, Tennessee Bar Foundation awards -- and especially the news that the TBA was named one of the best places to work in Nashville!

The TBA’s Year End CLE programming was recognized recently as the state’s top continuing education program by the Tennessee Society of Association Executives. Read about this and other legal news from around the state.

During 2021, officers, governors and delegates of the Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) will be elected as set forth in the association’s bylaws. Learn about how to run for these offices. But hurry, the deadline is Feb. 15, 2021.

Congratulations to this year's class of Senior Counselors and thank you to these members for leading the TBA Sections and Committees this year.

In August 1970, the TBA’s president was Joe W. Henry, who would later sit on the Tennessee Supreme Court (and the Journal’s award for outstanding legal writing would be named for him, see page 7). Henry’s president’s column was about the urgent need for a unified, or mandatory, bar. He declared it the “number one priority objective of this administration.” 

In this issue, we pay our respects to S. David Freeman, Samuel Tipton Jones II and Judge David Wilson Norton.

The Tennessee Bar Association’s 139th Annual Convention was like no other — instead of shaking hands with old friends and meeting new colleagues, it was a virtual experience in the midst of efforts to reopen our country and our state after several months in isolation because of the Coronavirus pandemic. 

DISABILITY INACTIVE

The law license of Williamson County lawyer Margaret L. Akins was transferred to disability inactive status on March 27. Akins may not practice law while on inactive status. She may return to the practice of law after reinstatement by showing by clear and convincing evidence that the disability has been removed and she is fit to resume the practice of law.

“The ultimate product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.”¹

William Zinsser, a lifelong journalist and writing teacher, was born in 1922 in New York City.² He attended Deerfield Academy and Princeton University, and served as a sergeant in North Africa and Italy in World War II.³