TBA Annual Conventions

We’re celebrating the Tennessee Bar Journal’s first 40 years all year! In each issue we will look back at an area of life in the law to see how the TBJ covered it. This month we examine coverage of the Tennessee Bar Association annual conventions.

The TBA’s first convention was held in 1881, but the Tennessee Bar Journal (having not been invented yet) didn’t report on that one. The first convention coverage was in May 1965, the Journal’s first year, where it didn’t exactly “cover it” but did run two full pages of the program in advance. That year the convention was in Nashville at the Andrew Jackson Hotel. Speakers included TBA President Olin White, Nashville Mayor Beverly Briley, Nashville Bar Association President J. G. Lackey Jr., Gov. Frank Clement, American Bar Association President-elect Hon. Edward W. Kuhn, Chancellor William M. Leech, Charles E. Whittaker, retired justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Tennessee Supreme Court justices Weldon B. White and Hamilton S. Burnett.

The TBA Auxiliary hosted an “Old South Tea” at the Capitol, as well as a Ladies’ Luncheon and Show at Belle Meade Country Club, which was held at the same time as the Lawyers’ Luncheon.

In 1966, registration was $25, plus each of the activities were priced separately, including the Lawyer’s Luncheon for $4. The Ladies’ Cold Buffet was $2.75 and the Ladies’ Luncheon at the Pan-O-Ram Club was $4. In August 1968, the TBA board voted to include a synopsis of annual convention business sessions in every August issue. This ran 29 pages that first year.

In May 1975, President F. Graham Bartlett’s president’s column, headlined “Speaking of Gals and Convention,” discussed the Annual Legal Secretary-Law Office Managers Institute (presumably the “gals”) and the TBA convention. That year it was in Gatlinburg and featured Dr. Irving Younger, famed teacher of evidence at Cornell University Law School.

Other famous speakers at conventions over the years have included Alistair Cooke, Tipper Gore, Lewis Grizzard, Wilma Dykeman, Harvard Law Professor Arthur Miller, Sen. Howard Baker, Jim Neal, Professor James W. McElhaney, Ralph Emery, Roy Blount Jr., Rep. Jim Cooper and Senate-hopeful Fred Thompson. Many Tennessee and U.S. Supreme Court justices have appeared at the convention, as well as several governors and mayors of most of the major cities in the state.

TBA conventions traditionally rotate around the state among each of the Grand Divisions. In 1990, the group ventured out of state for the first time, descending on Asheville, N.C. Since then the convention has been in Destin, Fla., twice.

Among the convention staples are the Lawyers Luncheon, lots of continuing legal education, a dance, the Young Lawyers Divison’s Race Gestae, and other various sports competitions that have included tennis and golf tournaments. Sections, committees and the Board of Governors meet.

One main point of having a convention is to conduct the business of the association and a big part of that is the installation of the new president. This traditionally happens during the Lawyers Luncheon and includes the passing of a gavel and a ring, as well as the administration of the oath of office, usually given by a member of the Tennessee Supreme Court.

Look for coverage of this year’s convention— history in making — on page 8 of this issue.

—Suzanne Craig Robertson