Chloe Kennedy was enjoying the benefits of a soccer scholarship – if not the game of soccer itself – while attending Jacksonville State University in Alabama when she decided the frequent hits to her head were jeopardizing her future.
“I thought I should reduce my head trauma if I wanted to work as a professional one day,” Kennedy, a native of Albertville, Alabama, laughs.
Kennedy felt it was necessary to protect her intellect despite – by her own admission – growing up hardheaded.
“I was a stubborn child,” she shrugs. “I was always right. I stayed on the straight and narrow and never got in trouble, but if my parents told me I couldn’t do something I wanted to do, or if they had an opinion I didn’t share, I had to know why. I asked a lot of questions, and I was never wrong.”
Fortunately, Kennedy says, she met a college professor who not only helped her to see there are shades of gray in what she believed was a black-and-white world but also suggested a career that would turn her headstrong nature into an asset: the law.
“I had a wonderful professor (at Jackson State) who was an Old Miss Law alum,” Kennedy recalls. “I took his real estate law class. He had us read case law and then analyze it in class. We had some heated debates.”
One day, an academic dust-up with a fellow student left Kennedy fuming. After class, she told her professor she knew the law supported her argument. He agreed but taught her a hard lesson.
“He said, ‘When you practice law, you’ll sometimes be right, but you won’t get the result you want.’”
At this point in her education, Kennedy was studying accounting. Her father was a CPA and her mother an accountant, she notes, and she was intending to follow in their footsteps.
However, noting Kennedy’s proclivity for debate, her professor suggested she apply to Ole Miss Law School. This piqued her interest.
“My dad wanted me to work for his firm, which was the most wonderful compliment he could’ve given me, but I needed to figure things out myself and establish my own reputation. So, I decided to take the LSAT and see where it took me.”
The LSAT took Kennedy to Ole Miss, where she set her sights on becoming a tax attorney, believing her accounting education would dovetail nicely into the cut-and-dry amalgamate of numbers and the law. But her classes did not pique her interest, she says.
“I wanted something different to come through my door every day; I wanted to never know which kind of case would land on my desk, or what kind of people I’d be meeting. I didn’t think staring at numbers and tax code all day would hold my interest.”
After graduating from Ole Miss in 2018 and passing the bar, Kennedy worked for a real estate investment trust in Nashville for one year. Then her fiancé, Michael Jones, an attorney with Luther Anderson in Chattanooga, told her the firm was hiring and wooed her south.
As an associate with Luther Anderson, Kennedy focuses her practice on general liability defense, including automobile and motor carrier accidents, premises liability, insurance coverage issues and construction litigation. Kennedy says this work gives her the variety she desires.
“Everyone does insurance defense, but the firm’s partners also focus on other areas of the law, such as criminal defense and family matters, so I get to dip my toes in different kinds of cases.”
At least one of Kennedy’s cases is a beast. Stacked on the floor behind the desk in her office are 11 binders as thick as Yellow Pages and packed with the complex details of a real property dispute she’s handling. More binders take up space on the other side of her desk. She says she’s looked at every page.
“That’s the technical record of the case,” she says without batting her overworked eyes. “Believe it or not, it’s exciting stuff.”
Kennedy says she also finds appellate work stimulating. While some attorneys dread writing an appellate brief, for example, she claims to look forward to it.
“It allows me to do a deep dive into the issues and law associated with a matter on which I’ve already spent a substantial amount of mental energy. To me, briefing is cathartic.”
Nevertheless, there is one thing Kennedy says she appreciates more than all of this: working for the partners at Luther Anderson, including Alaric “Al” Henry and Daniel Ripper, as well as Samuel Anderson, who’s now of counsel.
“Litigation is hard,” she says. “But having the support of good people makes getting through the messiness easier.”
Kennedy endeavors to pay that favor, as well as the mentorship of her parents, her real estate law professor and the partners at Luther Anderson forward each day by managing the runners program at the firm.
Many of Luther Anderson’s runners plan to attend law school, she says, and her role not only allows her to mentor them but also enables the runners to develop the skills necessary for any successful career, including collaboration, organization, time management and speaking skills.
“Countless individuals have spent a substantial amount of time fostering these skills in me, and I value being able to pass them on to our runners,” Kennedy says.
Kennedy extends her service to the community as a member of the local Rotaract and an ally of the S.L. Hutchins Bar Association. The latter is an association of legal professionals that aims to address the interests and concerns of Black and other attorneys of color in the Greater Chattanooga area. Her husband is currently the organization’s vice president.
Although her schedule is full, Kennedy says, she has an outlet for when she needs to let off steam: her kitchen.
“I love to cook. When I get home from the office, it’s how I empty my mind.”
Kennedy learned the basics of food preparation at the age of 8 from a cookbook chef Emeril Lagasse wrote for children. Since then, she’s refined countless recipes and created many of her own, but her specialty is a staple her family loves: lasagna.
Kennedy jokes that her husband’s craving for her lasagna is so great, she dares to make it only once per year. In reality, however, it’s a time-consuming process, so she’s turned it into an annual holiday.
“It’s a daylong affair. I make several and give most of them to my family. There’s only two of us and we can’t eat them all. If I left them all with my husband, he’d turn into Garfield.”
As Kennedy readies herself to return to the binders that envelop her desk, she reflects on how one of her qualities that led her to the law – her youthful obstinance – has softened since she’s become a practicing attorney. Although she declines to provide details from any particular case, she says she’s learned her professor told her the truth she needed to hear.
“I’m still stubborn but I’ve also accepted that not everything in the law is black and white; I can think I’m as right as rain but also be OK with someone not agreeing with me.”
That said, she adds as a possible word of caution to her legal adversaries, she’s not a pushover.
“There has to be some flexibility in a lot of what I do but there are times when I also have to draw the line.”