The Tennessee Faith & Justice Alliance is planning a telephone clinic for Knoxville area residents this week starting tomorrow and running through Thursday. The alliance is a project of the Tennessee Access to Justice Commission. In the Knoxville area, the program is coordinated by the KBA's Access to Justice Committee, Legal Aid of East Tennessee and the University of Tennessee College of Law. Learn more or sign up here to volunteer.

Legal organizations in Knoxville will hold a virtual Veterans Legal Advice Clinic Wednesday from noon to 2 p.m. EDT. The clinic is a general advice and referral clinic that serves between 20 and 30 veterans each month with a wide variety of legal issues. To volunteer, sign up online. For questions, contact Access to Justice Committee Co-Chairs Spencer Fair or Luke Ihnen.

U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Bernice Donald and her law clerk Devon Muse recently co-authored an article titled "Lifelong Collateral Consequences: The Modern-Day Scarlett Letter." The article has been published in the most recent edition of the Drake Law Review. The pair explore what happens to prisoners when they return to society, arguing that those with a criminal record face a number of indefinite barriers as they attempt to rejoin their communities. They conclude that a rise in the number of Americans with felony and misdemeanor convictions to “staggering levels” has revealed the “dire need to eliminate the collateral consequences that continue to burden so many people.” Donald represents Tennessee on the court. Muse was elected earlier this year as president-elect of the Washington County Bar Association.

Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP recently announced the recipients of its 2021 Diversity Scholarships. Gillian Mak, a law student at The George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., will clerk in the firm’s Nashville office this summer. The scholarship program is part of the firm’s diversity commitment, which includes promoting law students who reflect the diversity of the legal marketplace and are underrepresented in the profession. Mak is a first year law student and member of the Student Health Law Association and the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association. 

Federal Judge Sheryl Halle Lipman on Friday approved an agreement between civil rights advocates and the Shelby County sheriff to improve jail conditions and protect people from widespread infection, serious injury and death from COVID-19, Memphis Flyer reports. The agreement guarantees that the jail will implement rigorous monitoring and reporting, including: additional jail inspections, improved airflow and ventilation, better quality protective equipment, continued efforts to expedite release of those who are disabled or medically vulnerable and improved social distancing.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee today launched "In Our Backyards: Money Bail in Rural Tennessee," a web resource and storytelling campaign designed to raise awareness of the impact of money bail by highlighting the stories of rural Tennesseans who have experienced the consequences of being caught in the criminal justice system because they cannot afford to make bail. The project features stories from individuals in McMinn, Warren and Obion counties. In conjunction with the interviews, the group also hosted virtual community forums in six counties to encourage discussion of local money bail practices and alternatives to pretrial detention. Read more about the effort. The project is being funded by the Vera Institute of Justice.

Former U.S. District Court Judge Todd Campbell, a longtime Nashville legal mind and adviser to a vice president, died Sunday at 64. The Tennessean reported that the cause of death was multiple system atrophy, a neurodegenerative disease Campbell battled for years. A 1982 graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Law, Campbell first joined the Nashville law firm of Gullett, Sanford, Robinson & Martin, where he focused on constitutional law and federal election law. Several years later, he became a legal adviser to U.S. Sen. Al Gore Jr.’s 1988 presidential campaign. Gore’s selection as then-President Bill Clinton’s running mate and the campaign’s electoral win took Campbell to Washington, D.C., where he served as counsel to the transition and then counsel and director of administration in the vice presidential office.

Campbell returned to Nashville and private practice in 1995, but Clinton soon appointed him to fill a district court seat after Judge Thomas A. Wiseman Jr. took senior status. Campbell served on the bench for 21 years, including seven years as chief judge. While on the court, he heard several high profile cases, including the murder trials of Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman, Perry March and serial killer Paul Dennis Reid. Off the bench, he took a special interest in the Tennessee School for the Blind, visiting often to teach the students about the U.S. Constitution and judicial system. Campbell retired from the court in 2016, but went on to serve as an adjunct law professor at his alma mater, as well as the Nashville School of Law and Belmont University College of Law. He will be buried in a private ceremony tomorrow. A public event in his memory will be planned for a future date. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee has more on Campbell's career.

Gov. Bill Lee is scheduled to present his annual budget amendment this week; a move that usually signals the legislative session is nearing its end, the Tennessee Journal reports. The updated spending plan comes at a time of uncertainty given the influx of federal COVID-19 relief funds and the prospect of even more money from President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package. At a speech last week at the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, Lee hinted that a tax cut will be part of his budget amendment though the federal guidance specifies that COVID relief cannot be used to fund tax cuts. State Attorney General Herbert Slatery and his counterpart in Kentucky recently filed a lawsuit seeking to remove the strings attached to federal funds.

Lamar Alexander, who served three terms in the U.S. Senate and two as governor, was set to be honored by a joint convention of the General Assembly this afternoon, the Tennessee Journal reports. Alexander, a Maryville Republican who did not seek re-election last fall, also was in town to tour the new Tennessee State Library and Archives facility. The publication notes that Alexander’s first speech to a joint convention of the House and Senate occurred more than 42 years ago when he delivered his first budget address in February 1979.

Join your colleagues at the end of the month for a “crash course” on depositions and e-discovery. This year’s topics include deposition prep and strategy, the do's and don'ts of depositions and written discovery, and a panel discussion about e-discovery law and technology. The program, set for April 27 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. CDT, is being produced by Memphis lawyer Aurelia McBride with Glankler Brown.