In honor of Women’s History Month, the TBA has rallied its past, current and future female presidents for a one-hour conversation on their experiences, influences and the impact women have made on the legal profession. The virtual panel will take place on March 24 from 3 to 4 p.m. CDT. TBA Executive Director Joycelyn Stevenson will moderate the panel, which will include: former TBA presidents Sarah Sheppeard, Cindy Wyrick, Jackie Dixon, Gail Ashworth, Marcy Eason and Kathryn Reed Edge; TBA Vice President Tasha Blakney; TBA President-elect Sherie Edwards; and current TBA President Michelle Greenway Sellers. Register now.

The legal profession in Tennessee has a storied history of strong women who broke down the barriers that stood between them and the practice of law. Early examples of those trailblazers include Lutie Lytle and Marion Griffin.

Lytle secured many “firsts” in her legal career: first Black woman to earn a law degree in the South; first woman, of any color, to be admitted to Tennessee’s bar; first African American female member of a national bar organization. Though Lytle was the first woman admitted to the state bar, she taught at Central Tennessee College’s law department instead of actively practicing. She later moved to Topeka, where she became the first Black woman admitted to the Kansas bar and became a dedicated pro bono lawyer whose practice was focused on fighting the oppression of women and African Americans. Russell Fowler’s 2018 article for the Tennessee Bar Journal, “A Woman of Many Firsts,” tells of how Lytle passed an oral bar exam and earned her admission to the state bar in a time when the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that women were not qualified to be lawyers.   

Several years after Lytle was admitted to practice, Marion Griffin began her seven-year battle for admission to the state’s bar. Her petition to be licensed, In Re Griffin, 71 S.W. 746 (Tenn. 1901), was dismissed 3-2 by the Tennessee Supreme Court on common law grounds. In 1907, Griffin persuaded the General Assembly and governor to pass a statute allowing women access to the bar. She would later become the first woman elected to the Tennessee House and she practiced law in Memphis for more than 40 years. Featured in the Tennessee Bar Journal’s January 2011 issue, Sam Elliott’s article, “The Progress of Women Lawyers,” has more on Griffin.

The good work of Lytle and Griffin opened the door for women to practice law in Tennessee and set the stage for more trailblazers to follow. Tennessee Bar Journal Editor Suzanne Craig Robertson details the lives and work of early women lawyers in the state in “It’s Not Just for White Men Anymore” from the TBJ April 2005 issue and in “50 Years of Pioneers: Early Women in Tennessee Law” from the July 2001 issue.

Jackson attorney David Hardee passed away on March 17 after a battle with the COVID-19 virus. He was 67. Hardee received his law degree from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University and went on to help form the law firm now known as Hardee, Martin & Owens in 1986. Hardee was admitted to practice in all Tennessee courts and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee and was a member of the state and American Associations for Justice and the Inns of Court. Hardee’s memorial service was held at Northside Church yesterday and a video of the service can be found on Northside’s Facebook page. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be sent to Women of Hope Recovery Center, P.O. Box 94, Medon, TN, 38356, or RIFA, P.O. Box 2301, Jackson, TN, 38302. 

Girls Preparatory School of Chattanooga won the 2021 Tennessee State High School Mock Trial Competition Saturday night, prevailing over Montgomery Bell Academy of Nashville in the state’s first virtual mock trial competition. It was also the first state competition win for the school. The team will now represent Tennessee in the virtual National Mock Trial Competition in May. The championship round was presided over by Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Roger A. Page and scored by a team of TBA and TBA Young Lawyers Division leaders. At a virtual awards ceremony earlier in the day, Coffee County Central High School won the Team Sportsmanship Award, which is chosen by all participating teams. A list of all award winners and team rankings is available here. Missed the live stream? Watch the awards ceremony or the championship round here.

TBA CLE will host Real Estate Concerns in Elder Law on March 23 from 11 a.m. until noon CDT. This live virtual event will be led by Barbara Moss from Elder Law of Nashville and George Mudter of Mudter, Patterson & Cox PLLC, who will discuss the intersection of elder and real estate laws, including, best practices, common concerns and more.

The Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday approved the applications of two law firms to be licensed under the state’s new Alternative Business Structure program, which allows lawyers and nonlawyers to co-own law firms together, Arizona’s ABC15 reports. The state became the first in the country to abolish the rule barring non-attorney ownership of law firms, effective on Jan. 1. Trajan Estate LLC in Gilbert and Payne Huebsch PLC in Mesa are the first firms to be licensed for the new hybrid business model. Trajan Estate is a legal service provider focused on estate planning, while Payne Huebsch provides transactional legal services paired with tax and accounting advice. The news comes after the country’s first entirely nonlawyer-owned law firm opened in Utah earlier this week.

The state Department of Revenue has extended the filing and payment deadline from April 15 to May 17 for all Hall income tax returns and certain franchise and excise tax returns. The extension follows an announcement from the IRS extending the deadline for federal individual income tax returns to May 17. For the franchise and excise tax returns, the extension applies to individuals who file Schedule J2 “Computation of Net Earnings for a Single Member LLC Filing as an Individual.” The extensions will automatically apply, and no further action is required by affected taxpayers. Estimated payments due on April 15 are not included in the extension. Read more in a press release from the department.

The Tennessee Department of Revenue will offer its next free webinar on March 30 at 9 a.m. CDT. The session will cover sales tax resale certificates, including the proper use of resale certificates and the correct procedure to accept them if you are a vendor. The webinar is part of a series designed to provide tax practitioners, attorneys, accountants and others with the opportunity to learn more about tax-related topics and ask questions of department officials. Register for this webinar or see other upcoming sessions on the department's website.

The Senate Government Operations Committee on Wednesday approved SB600, sponsored by Sen. Joey Hensley, R- Hohenwald, which would remove 29 Tennessee Historical Commission members appointed by the governor and replace them in July with 12 members: four appointed by the governor, four by the House speaker and four by the Senate speaker. The move comes after the commission voted to relocate the Nathan Bedford Forrest bust from the Capitol to the State Museum. Many lawmakers want more say over the process, Tennessee Lookout reports. Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, and House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, have said they believe the legislature has control over the second floor of the Capitol and have sought an opinion from Attorney General Herbert Slatery on the legal process for the bust’s removal. The measure goes next to the Senate State and Local Government Committee. Gov. Bill Lee opposes the measure to remove the sitting members and cut the size of the commission by more than half. 

The U.S. House passed two bills yesterday that would grant legal status to two groups of immigrants living and working in the United States without documentation, Tennessee Lookout reports. The first provides a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands brought to the country as children who now are protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The second bill would give legal status to agricultural workers. The Biden administration supports both bills but also noted it wants Congress to take up broader immigration reform, like the U.S. Citizenship Act. That bill, based on Biden’s policy priorities, would pair these measures with efforts to give legal status to millions more immigrants, fund border security measures and provide aid to Latin American countries to address the root causes of migration.