Tomlinson finds home with employment law

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

June 27, 2013

Courtney Tomlinson has known since the fifth grade that she wanted to be an attorney. Specifically, she had designs on being an environmental lawyer.

“I thought that meant I would be defending animals in court,” she laughs now.

These days she has the far more adult task of defending companies large and small as an employment attorney in the Memphis office of the national firm Fisher & Phillips LLP.

As a child, Tomlinson was a military brat and moved with her father and the Army from Germany to Illinois to South Carolina. She considers herself a native of St. Louis, however, and attended the University of Missouri at Columbia to study political science and history, graduating cum laude in 2005.

Law school found her at the University of Mississippi and it was during this time that she clerked for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Office of Legal Counsel, the policy arm of the organization, in Washington where she discovered her love for employment law.

It was a strong foundation for Tomlinson, who worked directly for the assistant legal counsel, Peggy Mastroianni, and built strong connections while there. The EEOC recently came out with guidance on the use of criminal records in employment, something Tomlinson researched and helped form as an intern in 2008 . . . (read more)