Jerry Summers
As the Chattanooga Bar Association (CBA) prepares to celebrate 125 years of existence in 2022 the last entry in the 143-page history book was a chapter on the above sub-division of the CBA written by the late Jac Chambliss, who along with Maxfield Bahner are primarily responsible for the explosive growth of Chambliss, Bahner and Stophel into the mega-firm that exists today.
All known members are now deceased but when the “club” sprang up spontaneously in the mid-1930s without officers, bylaws, or minutes, a weekly Monday meeting was held at a special alcove table in the main dining room of the Patten Hotel, which at that time was recognized as Chattanooga’s leading hotel.
Jac Chambless wrote that “its excuse for existence was to continue the legal education of the young neophytes into the law.”
Each member would be assigned in rotation a spot on the next week's program to report on an interesting Tennessee case that had been published in the Southwestern Advance Sheets (the repository of opinions by the Tennessee Supreme Court.)
The meetings were “spiced with jokes and politics and teasing was freely dispensed and absorbed in good spirit.”
In a custom not engaged in today, from time to time a member and his wife would “invite the group and their spouses to their home for an informal picnic type lunch or supper on weekends or holidays especially for New Year’s football bowl games, then broadcast by radio.”
World War II would bring a significant reduction in the membership and the meetings were discontinued.
After the war, the club was occasionally reactivated at the Park Hotel dining room “but the stringencies of mid-life were too much and soon the Club became a thing of the past.
In 1982 Bill Brown and Jac Chambliss entertained the survivors of the club with a joint dinner party.
All of the living members but one attended the meeting, and the meeting was “much enjoyed, filled as it was with reminiscences well into the night.”
Jac Chambliss as spokesman for the spirit of the club and of the law as a profession gave a closing argument on behalf of the organization.
“The reunion was a poignant reminder of an earlier time when life was less hectic and more enjoyable. Indeed, someone expressed a regret that so many present-day lawyers tend to convert the profession into a business - noting that in the process, more has been lost than gained.”
(Perhaps he was right.)
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Jerry Summers
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