Savannah May made a bold fashion statement the first time she dressed as an attorney.
From the light pink T-shirt that complemented her blonde coiffure to the rosy skirt and matching purse at her side to her cherry red nail polish, she wanted to be noticed.
“I’m Elle Woods from ‘Legally Blonde,’” she’d chirp to anyone who asked, or who even looked like they might not know. Then she’d hold up her purse – in which she was carrying a stuffed toy dog – and say, “Trick or treat.”
“We couldn’t find anything like Elle Wood’s outfit that would fit a 7-year-old, so I wore different shades of pink and carried a stuffed dog,” laughs May, who’s now 26. “It was not a good costume, but I was proud of it.”
May says the notion to become an attorney first took root in her thoughts as she watched Witherspoon’s legal romcom as a child. Twenty years later, she’s Grant, Konvalinka and Harrison’s newest associate, working on family law and civil litigation cases as assorted as the Halloween candy her neighbors dropped into her Elle Woods purse.
“It feels like a dream,” May says. “I sometimes wake up and can’t believe I’m a lawyer.”
A native of Soddy-Daisy, May grew up in the lush woods of Mowbray Mountain, where she spent her summers scrambling along creeks and cliff lines and leaping off boulders into swimming holes.
Several generations of May’s family had resided on the mountain and made a living as factory workers, railroad hands and the like. But movies like “Legally Blonde” and TV shows like “Law & Order” nudged her thoughts beyond her small enclave, and as she and her father walked along the slice of the Cumberland Trail that snaked past their home, she asked him about the events she’d seen on the news and pondered the thing called the law.
May was still eyeing a career as an attorney when she arrived at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and began taking criminal justice courses. One week later, she experienced an “existential crisis of sorts,” she recalls, and changed direction.
“My original plan was to be an English major and minor in criminal justice. But I hated criminal justice, so I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer. My plan was to earn a doctorate in Spanish existential literature and become a professor.”
Even as May targeted a profession as obscure as the literature it teaches (she says Spanish existential literature is less a genre than a notion one encounters while reading little known works in other fields and has to perform an online search to jog her memory for examples), she was unintentionally still preparing for law school.
“My English degree focused on rhetoric, which is the art of argumentation,” she explains. “It’s a good thing I love to read and write because that was all I did.”
When May wasn’t in a classroom or nose deep in a book or paper, she worked as a server at The Walden Club in the Republic Centre. Like one of the tiny tributaries that carry water to a swimming hole on Mowbray Mountain, her job led her to Grant Konvalinka, which has an office in the same building.
“I met many of the lawyers who practice here while working at The Walden Club. They would sometimes come up for dinner and I was often their server,” May remembers.
When May learned Grant Konvalinka needed a runner, she applied for the position without mentioning her connections at the firm. The interview was already going well, she says, when a Walden Club regular spotted her and expressed enthusiasm on her behalf.
When May graduated from UTC in 2017 with degrees in English and Spanish, she placed school on the back burner and began working full time.
“I didn’t want to spend another six years in school to earn a doctorate,” she clarifies. “I was ready to work.”
May wore several hats at Grant Konvalinka during the two years that followed. As a runner, she served subpoenas, attended public outcry auctions and observed court proceedings, among other tasks. Later, she took over as the firm’s billing and accounts receivable clerk when the clerk at the time left.
May’s work introduced her to the day-to-day duties of attorneys and the inner workings of a law firm. It also lured her back to her original plan.
“Once I saw what lawyers do and how a law firm functions, I became interested in becoming an attorney again,” she says.
May continued her association with Grant Konvalinka throughout law school, clerking for prominent divorce lawyer John Konvalinka while home on break from the University of Tennessee College of Law. This sparked her interest in family law.
“Mr. Konvalinka let me participate in a big way on several cases and trials. That piqued my interest, so I started taking as many classes as I could in that subject area and helping during clinics.”
While in law school, May represented clients as a student attorney in a domestic violence clinic, trained as a student mediator in a family mediation clinic and participated in a presentation on mediation involving intimate partner violence at the Knoxville Family Justice Center’s Inaugural Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Conference.
She says she enjoyed representing individuals who needed help.
“I liked working things out for people, especially in delicate situations involving domestic violence. When I realized I have a knack for helping folks work through things without going to trial, I became interested in mediation.”
May says her efforts to mediate a bitter dispute between bickering roommates sealed her interest in family law and mediation.
“We took a case that was headed toward a nasty trial and helped them work things out. I loved taking two people who were on different pages and bringing them together.”
May graduated law school this year in the top 5% of her class. As she waited for the results of the Tennessee bar exam – which have since been announced – she settled in at the firm which by then was already her professional home.
In her spare time, Savannah practices yoga, plays with her dogs (she counts a French bulldog named Otis and a coonhound called Elmer as family) and spends time in the mountains where she grew up.
During her hikes through those familiar woods, she says she sometimes marvels how far she’s come since she first dressed up as Elle Wood for Halloween and how quickly that time passed.
“I know the journey here was long, but it feels like it happened in the blink of an eye.”