The Journal’s “back page” content looks a little different in 2025! Introducing “Closing Statements.” We’ll post a question here in each issue and invite you to submit your answer. Perhaps you’ll see your closing statement in the next issue! For this issue, members of the TBA’s Access to Justice Committee answered: “What is your most memorable pro bono experience?”

Knoxville attorney Heidi Barcus took office as president of the Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) during the group’s Annual Convention in Franklin last week. Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Dwight Tarwater administered the oath of office at the annual Lawyers Luncheon. Barcus has been active in the TBA for many years, serving most recently as TBA president-elect, Second District representative on the TBA Board of Governors and as a member of the TBA’s Law Office Technology & Management Section and Tort and Insurance Practice Section. She also has been active in the Knoxville Bar Association and American Bar Association. She handles health care, litigation, product liability and professional liability matters as a shareholder with Lewis Thomason. Read more about her career in this press release.

The TBA Environmental Law Section has announced that Layton Coker, a student at the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law, has won the 2025 Jon E. Hastings Memorial Award Writing Competition. The judges reported that Coker’s essay, Paradise Lost: Environmental Justice Gaps in TVA’s Clean Energy Transition, was both timely and captured the spirit of the competition. Nashville School of Law graduate Emily Crawford's submission "Jarkesy, Juries and Justice: The Future of EPA Civil Penalties" was named runner up. Rounding out the competition were exceptional entries by University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law students Logan Hawkins and Owen King. The Environmental Law Section sponsors the annual writing competition to recognize the best legal writing by a Tennessee law student on a topic of state or federal environmental law. The juried competition is held in memory of Jon Hastings, one of the section’s founding members.