Probate Judge Gomes chose legal career to help others

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

April 11, 2013

It was no joke when, on April 1, Kathleen Gomes was appointed by the Shelby County Commission to take the seat being vacated by retiring Probate Court Judge Robert Benham.

Gomes will run next year when the position, an eight-year term, comes up again for vote, but the recent appointment was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream that began when she was a child growing up in Chattanooga.

“My mother was a social worker, so I was raised around the idea of trying to help people,” Gomes said. “But after seeing that she didn’t really have a lot of authority to help people other than what she was restricted to do, when I was in college, I decided that the only way to really help people was to be a lawyer.”

She studied political science at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and then ventured across the state to the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law.

After the first semester, however, she moved to Washington for the opportunity to work for a new congresswoman from Chattanooga for a year. She returned, finished the first year of law school, and then was asked by state treasurer Harlan Mathews to work for him in Nashville.

She finished her stop-and-go law student career in 1980 and went to work for the law firm representing the William B. Tanner Co. media empire … (read more)