Attorney Courtney Keehan didn’t grow up wanting to become an attorney. Passionate about building design, she spent her youth planning a future as an architect.
Then, in the midst of pursuing her passion in college, Keehan discovered a different path that led her to the law.
Bolstered by a single mother who encouraged her to explore her interests, and exhibiting a strong aptitude for math, Keehan set her sights on architecture at a young age.
“My mom subscribed me to Architectural Digest magazine when I was in middle school,” she laughs. “I spent hours looking at buildings and houses and fell in love with them.”
Middle school also is when Keehan had her first taste of the law and decided it was not her cup of tea.
“I had a mock trial experience I hated,” she reveals with another laugh. “I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be an attorney. If you had told me in high school or college that I would become a lawyer, I would have said you were crazy.”
Keehan’s aversion to the law dissolved during her third year at the University of Virginia as she participated in a design studio tasked with revamping the Yamuna riverfront in New Delhi, India.
The Yamuna is a polluted tributary that cuts through the heart of New Delhi. The design studio in which Keehan participated set out to reimagine the riverfront and enable it to better accommodate the religious ceremonies and other community gatherings that take place along the shoreline.
As Keehan and her fellow students delved deeper into the project, the design studio turned into a study of New Delhi’s infrastructure and the ways in which the city could address the issues that led to the pollution of the river.
During this process, Keehan fell in love with environmental law.
“I saw that there were larger issues beyond the redesign of the riverfront and became very interested in environmental law. It was life changing.”
Keehan completed the environmental law program at University of Colorado Law School in Boulder and then returned to Chattanooga in 2018 to join the business section at Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel, where she had spent two summers working as an associate.
Although Keenan, 29, often finds herself elbow deep in mergers and acquisitions and other business-related matters, her work with local starts-ups and established companies occasionally allows her to do the kind of work that steered her toward law school.
Specifically, Keehan has been involved with the redevelopment of a number of brownfield sites in Chattanooga.
As she explains it, when an entity wants to redevelop a site that contains contaminants (such as a former gas station, dry cleaner or industrial facility), it can take advantage of the Tennessee Brownfield Voluntary Cleanup Oversight and Assistance Program and receive limited liability protection for certain contaminants.
Keehan guides her firm’s clients through the process, from completing the agreements with the state, to working with the state’s environmental consultants to determine courses of action, to securing the liability protection.
“I enjoy it because it combines my passion for environmental law with planning and development,” she says.
The volunteer work Keehan does is also focused on planning and development. The Chambliss associate is a newly elected trustee of Thrive Regional Partnership, a Chattanooga-based nonprofit that fosters responsible local growth in prosperity, the use of natural resources, transportation and infrastructure and access to broadband.
As Thrive was building its roster of statewide trustees, it reached out to Chambliss for suggestions. The firm presented the opportunity to serve to Keehan based on her interests and experience with the design studio, she says.
“I’m passionate about responsible growth. Chattanooga is growing rapidly, and we need to put together a large-scale plan with our partners across the region on what we want that growth to look like.”
Keehan also serves on the board of the Association for Visual Arts and is the vice chair of the environmental section of the Tennessee Bar Association.
Demonstrating the all-encompassing nature of her passion for the environment, Keehan wastes no opportunity to enjoy the natural resources that are a part of her local community. An avid runner, she says enjoys being outdoors and putting mile after mile behind her.
Keehan also is tending to her own small-scale renovation project. She and her husband of nearly three years, Tanner Roach, are restoring and updating the historical home they own in Signal Mountain, where she grew up.
While this gives the part of Keehan that fell in love with buildings and houses an outlet, she says she has no regrets about her change of direction in college. Instead, she feels fortunate to have identified an alternate path and to be involved with endeavors that are allowing her to help make a difference.
“I definitely understand why someone would want to be an attorney,” she says, “and I’m glad that’s the path I chose.”