Those who attended the Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) annual convention in June in Nashville were treated to an abnormally high number of colleagues sauntering through the convention halls wearing seersucker. They also had abundant opportunity to speak with former president Bill Haltom, as he extolled the virtues of seersucker. Bill’s devotion to unstructured, puckered, cotton fabric is unrivaled and unquestioned. However, his primary motivation for promoting the style lay not in his desire to visually impress, but in his commitment to improving the profession. For Bill, seersucker holds a close nexus with gentility and civility. It speaks to our courteous nature and our ability to engage in “civil” conflict. That is an important message, with or without the seersucker accoutrements.

According to our bylaws, the TBA exists, in part, to “cultivate … fellowship among its members.” Now, more than ever, that charge is critical to the success of the TBA and the advancement of our profession. Our organization has grown exponentially in the past 20 years. We are now the largest professional organization in the state with more than 13,000 members. Certainly, that is an achievement in which we can all take pride. However, with such growth, we have been forced to sacrifice. Gone are the days when it was possible to know and interact regularly with all of the attorneys in a particular community on a daily basis. It is not possible to have personal relationships with everyone in the bar anymore.

That reality poses a threat to our professionalism.

In the present climate, attorneys are becoming increasingly isolated from one another and the larger community. We preach the need to adapt and utilize technology to enhance the provision of legal services throughout the state. However, increased reliance on the internet often means less interaction with one another. Attorneys can now insulate themselves within the four corners of the office. From that isolated perch, it is easy to lose touch with the humanity of our profession. Civility and respect are simply more difficult to maintain in the absence of personal interaction. The challenge is to embrace technology while maintaining fidelity to our core values as attorneys, chief among them civility within the profession. These core values define us and guide the advancement of the profession.

Many reading this column are graduates of the University of Tennessee College of Law, my alma mater, and likely had the pleasure of having Fred LeClercq as a professor. Professor LeClercq was a colorful educator with a seemingly never-ending supply of axioms and adages to guide us students through our early instruction. I recall one day in his class, as he was lecturing us on the finer points of Civil Procedure, he stopped to answer a particular student’s question. I cannot recall the question, but I will never forget his response: “We are all brothers and sisters in the law, are we not?” That struck me as particularly instructive. Despite our disparate temperments, talents, and convictions, at the end of the day, we all belong to an exclusive fraternity. Tried in a fiery furnace, we are members of a profession that demands we respect one another, if for that no other reason than we have endured as practicing attorneys and we share a commitment to the Rule of Law and all that it entails.

I once heard a commentator, in describing the Beatles, state that “the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.” So it is with the Tennessee Bar Association and the practice of law in Tennessee. We should embrace the ample opportunities around us to commune with fellow attorneys and engage in the type of civil discourse that defines and strengthens our profession.

JASON H. LONG is a partner with Lowe, Yeager & Brown in Knoxville. A graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Law, he is a past president of the TBA Young Lawyers Division and the Knoxville Bar Association Barristers.