Richard J. Alley

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

June 13, 2013

Taylor Cates, attorney with Burch, Porter & Johnson PLLC, describes himself as “an adequate rhythm guitar player.”

It’s a skill that might not find him onstage at the Levitt Shell, but did help him with work at his first job out of the Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1999. His interest helped him to “speak the language,” and he went to work for a firm in Nashville that specialized in entertainment litigation.

When, in 2003, he and wife, Carolyn, moved home to Memphis where Cates had grown up and attended Germantown High School, it was as new parents with a growing family. There was also a family connection of law and he took an office just down the hall from his father Tom Cates, and father-in-law Joel Porter, both attorneys at the old-guard law firm.

With his connection to the legal profession in his father, there was always some indication that Cates would go into the profession as well.

“That’s something that was helpful in showing me what it was like,” he said.

With a bachelor’s degree in history from Virginia University, the course was an easy one to law school.

Cates says his bread and butter is in business litigation, but still works in entertainment and intellectual property law with referrals coming to him from the Memphis Music Foundation . . . (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

June 6, 2013

Jason Strain, a shareholder with Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz PC, grew up with the idea of the legal profession being a “good and interesting job.”

He saw it as a career his father,Alan Strain, a litigator with The Hardison Law Firm PC, always seemed to enjoy.

“To some extent I was kind of modeling that,” said the younger Strain.

It’s a path that led him to Mississippi State University to study political science and history, graduating summa cum laude in 2003. There was a brief flirtation with medical school but ultimately, he said, “There was too much chemistry involved.”

Wanting to go someplace different to spread his wings, and having worked in Washington one summer, he set his sights on Georgetown University Law Center. His wife, Amanda, worked for the IRS at the time and together, he said, they had “the quintessential D.C. experience.”

While at school, he used his background in history while working with a professor to research English legal history and in digging through the Georgetown law library, one of the best and most complete in the world. It was the perfect activity for someone who enjoyed the hunt for old manuscripts and primary sources . . . (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 31, 2013

Born and raised in Fayetteville, N.C., Douglas Scarboro has chosen to make Memphis his home. As the executive director of the Office of Talent and Human Capital for the City of Memphis, his job is to help others realize the opportunities and recognize the same assets that he has found here.

While nonprofits such as the New Memphis Institute, and corporate employers such as FedEx and International Paper, are players in the same human resource game, Scarboro said that when he first entered city government, “there was not another office that we had seen that focused specifically on recruiting, retaining and attracting talent for an overall metropolitan area.”

Rashana Lincoln, director of community engagement for New Memphis, a position previously held by Scarboro, works closely with the government office and says that Scarboro “understands what it means to be a young professional breaking into the community” as a transplant to Memphis.

“Having come through New Memphis and being a fellow really set him up to excel in his current role because he is part of a network of people that are committed to moving the city forward,” Lincoln said.

Even as he navigated his way through an alphabet of degrees – a bachelor’s from Morehouse College, master’s from Campbell University, doctorate from the University of Memphis – Scarboro was uncertain of his final goal, other than the want to help affect change within a community. It was a lofty goal and one first presented while a student at Morehouse and during 1996 when the Summer Olympics was in full swing in Atlanta … (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 30, 2013

Robert Tom, commercial and business litigation attorney for Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz PC, has been elected shareholder of the law firm.

The 35-year-old Tom grew up in Memphis and attended Memphis University School before going to Emory University in Atlanta to study business and finance. Becoming an attorney was never even on his radar screen.

“It really happened by chance,” he said. “I was keeping my options open.”

A friend was taking the LSAT at the time and Tom decided “on a whim” to take the test as well. The test went well and he took a job as a paralegal after graduation before leaving for New Orleans and Tulane University Law School, where he graduated cum laude in 2004.

“Being a business major, I wanted to do something related to that field or use that background for the type of work I’d be practicing in law,” Tom said. “The first place I started practicing, the litigation they did there was business-related litigation, so it happened by chance that the type of law that I was interested in practicing was the type of law the firm was doing.”

But that firm wasn’t in Memphis. Nor was it in New Orleans. Tom’s future wife, Margaret, a Florida native, had applied to medical schools and her first choice was in Tampa … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 24, 2013

There is a surge these days in Memphis boosterism, but there may be no one else with their pulse more on what is new and exciting and worth celebrating in the city than Rashana Lincoln.

As director of community engagement for the New Memphis Institute (formerly the Leadership Academy), Lincoln is charged with selling her greatest passion: Memphis.

Born and raised in Memphis, the White Station High School graduate went on to Clark Atlanta University, a small, historically black college that shares a campus with Spelman College and Morehouse College. She graduated in 1996 with a degree in business marketing.

Lincoln returned home as the Olympics descended upon Atlanta, and became caught up in the campaign for Harold Ford Jr.’s congressional run. She joined the staff as an advance person moving out in front of the campaign team. Lincoln said the experience was “intense, but phenomenal; it really exposed me to every pocket of the 9th District.”

Lincoln enjoyed working with the big-money donors as well as knocking on doors throughout the district and talking to the residents and those most affected by elections and legislation.

“I love people; that’s just my nature,” she said.

It was during the campaign that the importance of voting was instilled in her and it drove her to the University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville. Her father had a background in the law and she’d always seen a juris doctorate as “a great vehicle for any number of careers.”

She graduated law school in 2001, and though she never pursued a career in law she said the experience was invaluable. Her mother was ill when she came back to Memphis so Lincoln took over operations and management for the family business, Mayweather Catering … (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 23, 2013

In 2008, the Tennessee Supreme Court laid out a strategic plan to get attorneys more involved in pro bono work.

Though it isn’t required of the state’s professionals, there is an inspirational goal of 50 hours per year of public service that is heavily encouraged by the justices.

At the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, however, students are required to complete 40 hours of pro bono during their school career.

Callie Caldwell, public interest law counselor for the school, said that approach will benefit students when they leave school to practice.

“We wanted our students to get in there, dig in while they’re in law school, learn those skills and be very comfortable doing pro bono work so that when they graduate they’ll be able to quickly transition and be used to doing the kind of work that comes along with what’s typically considered as pro bono,” she said.

In that capacity, Caldwell’s work is two-fold as the director of the pro bono program: monitoring students and creating placement within their interests in a field with working lawyers of the community. With career services, she counsels and guides students that want to work in the world of public interest.

Students can’t start working until they’ve had at least 15 hours of coursework completed, usually in their second semester. They work with attorneys on projects such as the law school’s monthly pro se divorce clinic or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, working to allow the children of immigrants to stay in the country for up to two years and obtain a driver’s license, work, go to college or join the military … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 17, 2013

In her six years as a CPA, Ginna Word has seen the industry from both sides of a spreadsheet, as an auditor for Deloitte & Touche, and as a corporate, in-house accountant for The ServiceMaster Co.

The disparate views, she said, have given her a distinct advantage in her current position as recruiter for the Memphis office of Vaco, an upper-level placement and consulting firm.

The Clarksdale, Miss., native and University of Mississippi graduate came to Memphis after receiving a master’s in accounting from Ole Miss to work for Deloitte & Touche, where she’d interned during college.

“I tell people all the time that, graduating from accounting, there is no better way to start a career; you get exposure to so many things,” she said of her tenure at Deloitte & Touche. “What other job can you say that within a year you can be sitting down in the office of a CFO of a public company interviewing them and asking them about their processes and talking with them about their financial statements?”

Word worked at Deloitte & Touche for four years before leaving for ServiceMaster, where she spent a year. When an opening became available at Vaco, she jumped, and it was there that she said she had an epiphany.

“I realized after six years in accounting that, it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it – and I learned a lot from it and I wouldn’t trade the experience I had – but I just didn’t love it,” she said. “I wanted that feeling of really having a passion for what I do every day.”

That passion was found at Vaco where, at first, she was “scared to death,” she said, working in the people business to “match very talented people with great companies.”

There has been a shift in the past few years in the recruitment and staffing game. First, as people were laid off in the recession and frantic for work, and now, as things have calmed and evened out, more people are beginning to look around, not for just anything that might come along, but for a career advancement or change … (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 16, 2013

After graduating from Germantown High School, Steven Medlock left Memphis for the bluegrass of Western Kentucky University.

With a full-ride scholarship for soccer, his goal became to play in the big leagues. After graduating college in 2006, he played midfield center for the semi-pro New Orleans Shell Shockers. Though it was an exciting time, Medlock said, it was a long eight months spent living in a hotel room on Canal Street when not on the road.

“I made the decision after that one season to hang up the cleats, I didn’t really have a future in that,” he said. “It was awesome and I had a fantastic time, but I couldn’t survive on $250 a week for life.”

Medlock used his time in New Orleans to study for the GRE and entered the graduate program at the University of Memphis for a master’s degree in political communication and rhetoric. During that time, he kept his foot on the pitch by coaching soccer at Germantown High School and Memphis University School, and in a club league in Collierville.

His intention was to go on and earn a doctorate, but he found he wasn’t interested in a life of academia. The legal profession, in contrast, would be “promises of golden riches,” he laughs now. He was always interested in the law and looked up to friends and mentors, Nick Tansey and assistant district attorney Chris Lareau. He met both through a local men’s soccer league … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 10, 2013

Fittingly, Kenya Bradshaw can trace her life’s mission back to her childhood and a family that valued public service.

As the executive director of the Memphis chapter of Stand for Children Tennessee, it is just such a background that bolsters her in the day-to-day struggle to make education available to everyone as early as possible.

“I feel like, if Memphis is ever to reach its fullest potential, the greatest vehicle through which we can get there is by investing in our children through early childhood education, early home visitation and in also having a strong K-12 public education system,” Bradshaw said.

The Whitehaven High School alum was born in Miami but moved to Memphis at a young age. For college, she went east to the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga where she received an undergraduate degree in marketing and international business. The goal, clearly, was to make her mark in the corporate world of products and finance.

“My life’s ambition was to design the next Coca-Cola product or work for FedEx,” she said. “When I went to college I knew that I was going to work in marketing.”

While in school, Bradshaw participated in the program Student Support Services, which helped her to be able to finish school. Once she graduated, she was given the opportunity to work for the program and quickly moved into management.

“It still is one of the greatest experiences of my life because I could directly see the work that I did translated into changing the lives of my students,” she said.

Though she cherishes the education she received at Whitehaven, she felt she was unprepared to be competitive in college and saw the same situation for incoming students at UT … (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 9, 2013

Julie McLaughlin has worked her way up the legal ladder for much her life.

Beginning with a degree in paralegal studies from Hinds Community College in Raymond, Miss., and then a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Memphis, the final rung was earning a law degree from the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law in 2001.

The Pickens, Miss., native said she knew she wanted to be an attorney as early as the eighth grade.

“My uncle is an attorney in Jackson, Miss., and I just became fascinated with the law,” McLaughlin said. “I don’t know why at that age, but I did and I never changed my mind.”

During her time in law school, McLaughlin says she was “always very impressed with the professors” she had there and was lucky enough to have several mentors to look up to, especially Ernest Lidge, who helped her get an externship with the Labor Board.

McLaughlin worked with Magistrate Judge Diane Vescovo, who mentored her on the practical application of the law as an extern as well.

“Everything in law school is book, book, book, and then when you get out it’s a whole new world, so having those kinds of experiences to fall back on really helps,” she said.

McLaughlin has been with the Kiesewetter Law Firm PLLC since late last year, and has focused her practice over the years on labor and employment law, employee benefits and corporate law. It’s an area she was introduced to during her second year of law school as a clerk for Weintraub, Stock, Bennett & Grisham, now The Weintraub Firm PC … (read more)