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WHO AM I?
For almost twenty years, I have worked for a non-profit legal aid agency, originally as a staff attorney, gradually moving into management. I have also been fortunate to be a member of the Tennessee Bar Association for nearly as many years. I began my service to this Association as a member of the original Pro Bono Committee when it was first chaired by Bruce Bailey with Chambliss and Bahner.
Since that first committee work, I have been able to continue in various leadership positions with the Tennessee Bar and with other Bar Associations. I continue on as a member of the "Pro Bono Committee" renamed the Access to Justice Committee of the Tennessee Bar Association and currently edit our newsletter, "The Volunteer Attorney." I also serve on the Memphis Bar Association's Access to Justice Committee. I served as President of the Lawyer's Association for Women, Anne Harris Schneider Chapter, as Treasurer of the Madison County Bar Association, as a member of the T.B.A. Board of Governors, as President of the Tennessee Association of Women Attorneys and most recently as a member of the Board of Directors for the Memphis Bar Association. I have chaired the Juvenile and Children's Law Section of the T.B.A. for the past year and a half and currently serve on the Executive Committee for the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section of both the T.B.A. and Memphis Bar Association.
While my service to the various Bar Association's has been of great importance to me in my professional development, I have also been an active member of my community of legal services providers serving as a Board Member of the Tennessee Alliance of Legal Services and conducting presentations regularly. I have produced an average of one Continuing Legal Education program per month for the past 10 years and presented at numerous programs including programs on professionalism, juvenile court practice and procedure, pro bono mediation and elder adult abuse and exploitation.
I have been married for fifteen years to my husband, Carl E. Seely, a senior partner in a small firm in Jackson. I have two children from my first marriage, a son, Warren W. Edwards, who is a recent graduate of the University of Memphis and currently employed as a teacher/counselor at Youth Villages in Memphis and a daughter. C. Claire Edwards, who is a junior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
I am active with my church, currently serving as a trustee for the First United Methodist Church of Jackson and as the Peace and Justice Advocate for the Memphis Conference of the Methodist Church.
A few years ago I worked with a group of Memphis lawyers to produce a conference in the fall of 2007 called "Lawyers as Peacemakers, Lawyers as Problem Solvers." We began meeting informally over dinners to talk about our concerns and hopes for our profession. The more we talked, the more we felt, strongly, that as lawyers, we were more than litigators, more than the cardboard cads so frequently portrayed on television shows. We felt that popular culture had reduced our profession to the 'hired gun' caricature and we knew we were more than that. We knew that because lawyers are solicited to sit on the boards of churches, of non profit agencies, because when people are in trouble or need, lawyers are the professionals communities turn to for problem solving. I want that message to resonate again for all of us. Not that I expect the lawyer jokes to stop, but maybe they could moderate a bit.
Becoming a mediator in 2001 was key piece of the puzzle of what I believe is a better way to practice law. Over the years, I have been very lucky to have had the chance to work with numerous fine people such as Marietta Shipley, Larry Bridgesmith, Jackie Kittrell, Anne Barker and Jocelyn Wurzburg on issues involving expanded access to mediation and look forward to a continued growth of this incredibly empowering problem solving methodology.
I believe our profession is and should be a problem solving profession. We are the ones who were writing the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights when the popular medical procedures of the day included blood letting. Lawyers led the fight for civil rights, for the rights of the accused to counsel and we should reclaim our place as champions for our society and culture, as advocates for those with no voice.
I believe that small firms, firms such as the one founded by my husband, are the backbone of our profession and we should find more and better ways to help those small businesses succeed. We should work towards helping them provide their families and employees with more health care options and other similar benefits. I strongly support an increase in the hourly reimbursement rate for attorneys who accept appointed work. Specifically I would recommend that the rate for attorneys be commensurate with the rate paid to other professionals in appointed cases.
Lawyers need more and better ways to live the values important to our culture and society; the values of integrity, honesty, courtesy and professionalism that don't always thrive in an adversarial setting and sometimes get lost in the heat of battle. Living one's values in the practice of law, though, is more than a catch phrase, it is key to one's satisfaction with life and with a career in law. Ultimately, though, the way we have practiced law in the past will change as more alternatives are implemented. I believe better usage of mediation, collaborative law and other more holistic ways of helping people solve their problems will improve the justice system, the community's perception of that system and reduce the high levels of attorney depression and dissatisfaction.
I want to find ways to reach out to the judiciary, the clerks who run our courts and, especially, the public, to find better and more efficient ways to deliver access to our courts for those in need and alternatives for those who don't need to be in the courts. We should educate the public about their rights, and also about their responsibilities as citizens.
I am proud of being a lawyer. When my children asked my husband and me at the dinner table a few years ago, what we could be if we could be anything we wanted to be, we looked at each other and replied, "We would be lawyers."
Linda Warren Seely
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"Linda could have used her law degree to make a lucrative living, but she instead chose to dedicate her career to providing legal services to those of limited means. When you think about the thousands of individuals who have received assistance with legal matters ranging from predatory lending to domestic violence to healthcare benefits it is easy to see her contributions to the legal profession and society as endless."
Read the whole article
An article from The Mediation Group of Tennessee, LLC
An article from Memphis Lawyer
Linda in the news
Story on Fox 13 evening news about Attorney for the Day program--October 23, 2008
Chief Justice Janice M. Holder and MBA President Arthur E. Quinn on Ch. 3's Live at 9 on Monday, March 30, 2009, discussing the 4ALL Pro Bono Public Service Day.
Linda being interviewed on Fox 13's Good Morning Memphis--Sept. 18, 2008
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