Everyone knows that time flies when you are having fun, but time also flies when you’re hard at work in a career you enjoy. Stephen Powers can attest to this phenomenon, as he says his 31 years in practice have “gone rather quickly.”
Powers grew up in South Pittsburg, and attended UT Knoxville for his undergraduate education in political science. He entered law school in 1976, after deciding a three-year waiting list for Auburn’s Veterinary School wasn’t for him. Two of Powers’ brothers also went into law, one with Arnett, Draper and Hagood in Knoxville and the other with Powers at Baker Donelson. It may have been something in the genes, Powers jokes.
Powers clerked for Arnett, Draper and Hagood for two years during law school with the defense practice in products liability, medical malpractice, hospital liability law, personal injury defense and some labor and employment law work. When Powers decided he wanted to do civil litigation as well as labor and employment law work, Senior Partner Foster Arnett advised him to decide where he wanted to live, and then he would be able to find whatever job he wants.
Powers says he knew he didn’t want to stay in Knoxville and wanted to be closer to home. He moved to Chattanooga and started his first day of private practice on March 3, 1980 with Humphreys, Hutcheson, and Moseley. Powers says that Moseley was the best mentor any young lawyer could have.
“Not only was he just extremely bright and imaginative, but he was also a first rate trial lawyer and a very good guy to be around and learn from,” Powers says.
It was here that Powers got a real opportunity to get into the court room with products work for medical manufacturers, product liability work for the Coca-Cola Bottler’s Association and a bit of aviation law in defending manufacturers of aircrafts and engines.
Since then, Powers has continued to do labor employment law work and personal injury defense work. For the past five years, his personal injury defense work has been heavily devoted to transportation law and trucking accident cases as well as transportation regulatory law. In addition to transportation cases, he does a lot of product liability defense with medical devices, construction equipment and still does some employment law work. In his work with transportation law, he represents some of the larger motor carriers in the country locally and in other parts of the country on trucking accident cases in everything from the very serious accident to those that are less so.
For the transportation law practice that is unrelated to trucking accident work, he drafts all kinds of contracts for motor carriers as well as freight forwarders and logistic companies, brokers firms and consultation work with them on anything that comes up essentially in the transportation area.
“It’s a variety of work, and to some extent, unfortunately, you don’t know when you come in each morning what you are going to have to deal with,” Powers says. Yet, at the same time, he says the opportunity to do work for motor carriers and different transportation providers helps him in his understanding of trucking accident defense.
“I get to learn a lot more about the business, how trucking companies operate, how the brokerage firms operate and such. I think it helps me significantly on the accident defense side and also helps keep me abreast of the regulations,” Power says.
What keeps him at this stressful work more than anything else is the people for whom he gets to work, Powers says.
“If I didn’t really like the people I work for, I’d do something else because it’s a very, very stressful career and is becoming more so all the time in the litigation practice area, particularly with electronic discovery, which adds so much to a particular case, and trying to keep abreast of what is asked for in the case and what has to be produced,” Powers says.
While Powers agrees with his mentor’s advice that being happy where you live helps with job satisfaction, he says he recommends to young attorneys to determine a particular practice area that they want to focus on and focus their work in two or three different kinds of practice areas. Powers says, “The way of the general practitioner is becoming harder and harder all the time. The laws themselves are becoming so complex in many areas that it’s hard to be a healthcare practitioner and know everything you need to know about healthcare law ... and be an expert in a lot of other things, too.”
Although the associates who come out of law school generally know which direction they want to take, at Baker Donelson, they are given whatever opportunities and exposures to different practice areas that they want.
“We try to help them figure out exactly what they’re best at, as well as where their interests really lie. I think that’s key in today’s legal careers, which wasn’t as true when I got out of school 30 plus years ago,” Powers says.
Powers is now busy writing a chapter for a book on electronic discovery, and his hobby of raising, breeding, training and selling horses. His family currently has 10 horses, and Powers says it’s akin to a devotion to another business. He says he also loves to hunt, and right now it is turkey hunting season, which has been his passion since he was 8-years-old.
“I’d rather turkey hunt as to eat or do anything else, but unfortunately I don’t get to do as much of it as I wish I could,” Powers says.
Another passion for Powers is his work with the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti. Up until last year, Powers was on the board of directors, but with the Haiti earthquake he functions now as an advisor outside the council to manage the various funds afforded to Haiti from different groups and takes care of many legal issues as a result of the increase in funding and problems in Haiti.
“The CNP program has had the best results with children byincreasing their life expectancies than any other group in Haiti. It’s a hard, hard thing when you see the need down there and to stay after it year after year when an earthquake comes along sets you back to the building stage in many respects,” Powers says.
Perhaps, Powers’ nickname of “perpetual motion” helps reiterate just how the time flies by with his stressful but enjoyable career and how much fun it has all been.