While day-to-day practice for lawyers may have changed during the pandemic, ethical and professional obligations to clients, opposing counsel and the state bar generally have remained the same. Understanding how these obligations are being molded in the current environment requires a review of confidentiality rules — especially those covering electronically stored information — and standards of professionalism for remote settings. Join Dominic Rota with Patterson Intellectual Property Law on Aug. 13 from 3 - 4 p.m. CDT for this informative webcast.

Leadership Nashville recently named a new class of 44 members, including six attorneys. Lawyers among the group are Taryn Anderson, president of Junior League of Nashville and COO, Sandbox Entertainment Group; Trace Blankenship, Bone McAllester Norton; Michelle Gaskin Brown, Amazon; Brigid Carpenter, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz; James Gooch, Bass Berry & Sims; and Kolin Holladay, Polsinelli. The nine-month course will begin in September and focus on government, media, education, business, labor, diversity, quality of life, human services, health, arts, entertainment and criminal justice.

A series of short videos featuring quick tips for attorney well-being are now available on the TBA’s YouTube page. Licensed psychotherapist Lindsey O’Connell leads the videos, which cover stress relief, goal setting, overcoming thought distortion and more. Today’s theme is Personal Wellness. O’Connell gives helpful recommendations on building meaningful resilience to help overcome the challenges practicing law presents.

President Joe Biden’s administration yesterday issued a more limited national eviction moratorium days after the original freeze expired, NPR reports. The order comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and covers parts of the U.S. they say have "substantial" and "high" spread of the coronavirus. The legality of the new order remains in question and could face challenges. The Biden administration said the president "quadruple-checked" on whether he had the legal power to extend the moratorium unilaterally, but that due to a Supreme Court ruling that blocked the CDC from extending its past moratorium beyond the end of July, his hands were tied. 

Judge Angelita Blackshear Dalton has overturned the conviction of a man who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the 2000 killing of a Nashville woman, the Tennessean reports. In 2003, Paul Shane Garrett was convicted in the blunt force trauma death of Velma Tharpe and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was released in 2011. Much of the case rested on what Dalton called “Garrett’s now ‘debunked’ confession” that he allegedly gave to police, though it was not caught on tape. Defense attorneys from the Tennessee Innocence Project say Garrett never confessed to the crime and that police were aware “within a month of his arrest” of DNA evidence from the crime scene that did not match Garrett. "The techniques used by Detectives ... were, at best, questionable and led the court to rely on inaccurate and misleading information," Dalton found. A formal dismissal hearing in the case has yet to be scheduled.  

Chattanooga law firm Summers, Rufolo and Rodgers PC has made a $5 million gift to the University of Tennessee College of Law. According to the College of Law’s website, the gift will support the Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution, the Legal Clinic, the Douglas Blaze Professorship and scholarships for students interested in pursuing legal careers in advocacy. The firm previously gifted the law school $900,000 in February. Summers, Rufolo and Rodgers member Jeffrey Rufolo said supporting the law school “is paramount to the long-term success of and sustainability for the legal profession in the State of Tennessee." A classroom and a moot court team at the law school will be named after the firm.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper today signed an executive order requiring face masks indoors at all city buildings, effective tomorrow, the Tennessean reports. The order comes after a new wave of COVID-19 infections tied to the more contagious Delta variant. Shelby County, Hamilton County and the City of Knoxville have all previously enacted mask mandates for city buildings as well. Metro’s mandate applies to all Metro employees and members of the public, and it will be re-evaluated on an ongoing basis.

Former Gov. Bill Haslam has announced he will serve as treasurer of the Yes on 1 Committee, a campaign promoting the right to work amendment that will appear on the November 2022 ballot, the Associated Press reports. The amendment would place the state law that prohibits a company and a union from requiring workers to pay union dues or fees into the state Constitution. The law was enacted in 1947, but Republican lawmakers have completed the lengthy process to place it on the ballot as a constitutional amendment. The Yes on 1 Committee says the law would be harder to repeal if it were a constitutional amendment, but opponents say the measure discourages workers from joining unions in a state where unions already have very little foothold. 

The University of Tennessee has resumed its search for dean of the College of Law. Interim Dean Doug Blaze will leave the position on June 30, 2022. The law school invites experienced and energetic leaders to apply for the role, which is responsible for setting overall academic and strategic priorities for UT Law, allocating resources to move those priorities forward and developing a collaborative community committed to student success. Priority consideration will be given to materials received by Sept. 10. Contact executive recruiter Brooke M. Swart for confidential inquiries and nominations. Read more on the position and how to apply.

A new report shows how many floor votes were missed by members of the Tennessee General Assembly during the last legislative session, the Tennessee Journal reports. According to the scorecard assembled by the Club for Growth Foundation, the average representative missed 8% of the vote, while the average senator missed 6%. Sen. Katrina Robinson, D-Memphis, who is set to stand trial in September on charges of fraud and money laundering, missed 40% of the Senate votes, the most among her colleagues. Rep. David Byrd, R-Waynesboro, missed 100% of the votes due to being hospitalized after contracting the COVID-19 virus. Months after voting for a resolution saying the news media had "sensationalized the reporting on COVID-19 in the service of political agendas,” Byrd spent 55 days on a ventilator, received a liver transplant and spent a total of eight months in the hospital and rehab. The Tennessean reports that Byrd is now back home and encouraging people to consider getting vaccinated.