Meet TBA Human Resources and Administrative Coordinator Tanja Trezise! Tanja is responsible for all human resource functions at TBA as well as assisting with other administrative tasks such as membership dues, CLEs and meetings. Tanja enjoys traveling and her trip to Egypt (seen here) was a check off her bucket list! Most recently she’s been to Arizona and Mexico and will be traveling to Michigan in the fall for the birth of her first grandbaby!

The #TeamTBA series offers members a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the TBA and how each staff members makes the association run. Check back every Wednesday for a new staff profile in TBA Today and on the TBA's Facebook, Twitter Instagram accounts.

The Tennessee Department of Revenue will host a free webinar on Aug. 30 at 9 a.m. CDT to discuss liquor-by-the-drink tax. Participants will learn about registration, price schedules, filing and payment, inventory deductions and exemptions, record keeping requirements and more. Register for the program here or check out more free webinars in the series.

Mark Chalos, managing partner of Lieff Cabraser’s Nashville office, has been elected co-chair of the Class Action Litigation Section of the American Association for Justice (AAJ). The section creates a forum for attorneys to share ideas, discovery, and litigation strategies and allows AAJ members to network and work collaboratively on class action cases. Read more from Lieff Cabraser.

Two Patterson IP attorneys, Ed Lanquist and Scott Douglass, have joined Baker Donelson as shareholders in the firm’s intellectual property group, the Nashville Post reports. Lanquist, who will be president of the TBA in 2024, is a longtime leader at Patterson, where he was named president and managing partner in 2009 and served in those positions nearly 10 year. He will be based in Baker’s Nashville office. Douglass, a former shareholder at Patterson, will join Baker’s Memphis office.   

Eighteen attorneys have been selected to participate in the 2023 class of the Nashville Bar Foundation Leadership Forum. Participants will take part in monthly workshops for nine months to help them realize their potential and to benefit the legal profession and local community. The forum was created in 2014. Class members must have three to eight years of experience to be considered. Read NBF’s press release for a full list of class members.  

Nationwide litigation firm Freeman Mathis & Gary LLP today announced it will add five attorneys to its Nashville office. Jason Pannu, former TBA president, will join the firm as partner and office chair. Associates will include Lorne Hiller and Jacob Jones. Additionally, two attorneys from the firm’s Los Angeles office, Marc Shrake and Jordan Meeks, will relocate to the Nashville office. “I am excited to join FMG and gain access to its resources and national platform,” Pannu said. “We have already assembled a great team in Nashville and look forward to growing the office in the near future.”

The Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law is seeking to hire up to three faculty members to begin on or around July 1, 2023. The director of bar success, a non-tenure-track position, will teach bar preparation courses, coordinate LMU Law’s supplemental bar preparation programming for its graduates, work collaboratively with other faculty, including the three other full-time academic and bar success faculty, and mentor students and graduates. The law school is also seeking to hire up to two tenure-track faculty members. Areas of greatest curricular need include civil procedure, constitutional law, criminal law and criminal procedure and evidence. Find more job postings on the TBA’s JobLink site.

The TBA YLD, in partnership with the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands and Legal Aid of East Tennessee, hosted a virtual name change clinic on Saturday. Fifteen attorneys and eight law students met on Zoom for a training, and then assisted clients in filling out name change petitions and giving counsel and advice on pro se representation. Thirty clients were served at the clinic and $7,500 in legal services were donated. The name change clinic is a new signature project of the TBA YLD aimed at making Tennessee a more welcoming place.

The city of Knoxville is asking the court to prevent the Knoxville News Sentinel from obtaining any documents created by a private firm during the city’s process of hiring a new police chief. The city also doesn't want to turn over documents related to the search, despite having previously said none were created. That response comes after the Sentinel sued the city in July after it refused to release documents related to the police chief search. Knoxville also moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing the Sentinel is “weaponizing” the state's open record laws, and requiring the city’s search firm to turn over documents that would have a “chilling” effect on the city. The Knoxville News Sentinel has more on the story.

The TBA Environmental Law Section has announced Alejandra Nawrocki, a student at the Belmont University College of Law, as the winner of its Hastings Writing Competition for 2022. The judges selected Nawrocki’s essay, Environmental Crime: Incentivizing Corporate Compliance Through a Modification of the Organizational Federal Sentencing Guidelines, for being timely and capturing the spirit of the competition. University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law student Zachary Jernigan's essay, Equitable Apportionment Applied to Interstate Aquifers: Did Mississippi Really Not See This Decision Coming?, was chosen as runner-up. The competition, founded in memory of one of the Environmental Law Section's founding members, Jon E. Hastings, is a juried competition for the best legal writing by a Tennessee law student on a topic of Tennessee or federal environmental law.