"At the TBA, Jan. 1 marks the beginning of new initiatives," President Sherie Edwards writes in her President's Perspective column. She gives a sampling of what’s upcoming, including legislation, Your Path to Well-Being, the Women in the Profession Committee, and the SOLACE program (Support of Lawyers/Legal Personnel—All Concern Encouraged). Edwards also outlines how you can get involved in all these programs.

Poppy O'Guinn Steele examines how the U.S. Supreme Court and the state of Tennessee have addressed the unique needs of deaf children. The approaches taken by other states provide a better roadmap for higher literacy rates and lower underemployment so that the Deaf population can fully participate in and contribute to society. Read her assessment.

In 2021 the law changed as to in utero wrongful death, columnist John Day explains. The language of former subsection (d) was deleted by the General Assembly. Now, an action for wrongful death can be filed and maintained if the decedent was a “person,” which “includes an unborn child at any stage of gestation in utero.” But what is meant by the phrase “unborn child at any stage of gestation in utero?” 

Longtime Tennessee Bar Journal/TBJ Select Editor Suzanne Craig Robertson has announced that she plans to leave the TBA later this spring. Robertson has edited the Tennessee Bar Journal and anchored the TBA’s award-winning communications team for more than 34 years. “We are sad to lose her, and grateful for all she has given to the TBA over the years,” TBA Executive Director Joycelyn Stevenson said. “She will be greatly missed by all of us and the hundreds of members she has worked with over the years who appreciate her talent as a writer and editor, her intelligence, her passion, her personality and her loyalty.” Robertson said it has been “a wrenching decision because I love this magazine and this association. It has been my honor to work with this staff, Editorial Board, columnists and other volunteers all these years, doing this important work for Tennessee lawyers.”

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