Editorial
Front Page - Friday, May 21, 2010
Young Lawyers Division working hard on multiple fronts
David Laprad
Jason Demastus is a general practitioner at Kennedy, Koontz & Farinash. He’s also the 2010 president of the Young Lawyers Division of the Chattanooga Bar Association, where his goals include growing the membership and encouraging young attorneys to become involved in their community.
- David Laprad
Most of the senior members of the Chattanooga Bar Association are able to regale friends and colleagues with hours of entertaining war stories from their decades as attorneys. Many newer lawyers, including 30-year-old Jason Demastus, have little to add to such conversations.
“At this point in my career, I could spend more time listening to war stories than telling them,” he says.
Likewise, more than a few of Chattanooga’s older lawyers have enough children and grandchildren to fill a jury box. Demastus finds himself lacking in this department, too, but only because he and his wife have hardly breached the subject of kids. Actually having one remains a possibility for the future.
“We do have a great dog. He’s 20 pounds of pure mischief,” Demastus says, holding his hands in the air like he’s grasping an invisible basketball.
Demastus is anything but a freewheeling upstart, though. From his law practice at Kennedy, Koontz & Farinash, to his duties as the 2010 president of the Young Lawyers Division of the Chattanooga Bar Association, to his participation on a number of volunteer boards, Demastus is not only keeping busy professionally but also is giving back to his community.
As a general practitioner, Demastus concentrates on criminal defense, matrimonial litigation, general litigation, business formation, bankruptcy and several other areas. When someone asks him what he does, he tells them the only things he doesn’t do are deeds and property rights work.
If there’s a thread running through Demastus’ practice, it’s a desire to find solutions that will help his clients. “I like the adversarial nature of the law, but more than anything else, I enjoy using the law to seek out justice and help people sort through their dilemmas,” he says.
Demastus began his journey in the law at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history. While at UTC, Demastus studied constitutional law under William M. Barker, the chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court at the time. Through the coursework, Demastus became interested in how the law could be applied to civil rights, making law school the logical next step.
While attending Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., Demastus was drawn to bankruptcy work. This led to a clerking position with Kennedy, which was well respected in the field. When Demastus received his Juris Doctorate in 2004, he returned to Chattanooga, passed the bar exam and set up house full-time at Kennedy. Although he did bankruptcy work for his first two years at the firm, his practice gradually expanded into what it is today.
As president of the YLD, Demastus is focused on growing the membership and encouraging young attorneys to become involved in their community through social events and charitable work.
While working toward these goals involves some menial labor, such as updating email addresses and phone numbers, Demastus is also putting his problem-solving skills to work as he and his fellow YLD’ers try to figure out an efficient way to establish contact with new attorneys.
The social events are another big part of the YLD’s 2010 calendar. “We just had one at Champy’s,” Demastus says, referring to the restaurant on ML King Boulevard that is becoming famous locally for its fried chicken and tamales. “We had good food and a good time, and it wasn’t too bad on the budget.”
The Champy’s social included members of the UTC Gold Council, a group of UTC graduates from the last ten years, allowing members of the YLD to meet other professionals working in Chattanooga.
A future social event might see the YLD’ers getting together with Chattanooga’s young CPAs. “We’re trying to use our membership to spread the word about who we are and what we do, and to interact with different people throughout the city,” Demastus says.
The activities in which the YLD participates aren’t all food and fun, Demastus says; many of the organization’s efforts are geared toward getting more of its members involved in community service projects. One such endeavor scheduled to take place in the near future is Wills for Heroes, in which attorneys will provide wills for policemen, firemen and members of the military. The YLD is also planning to work with Northside Neighborhood House to supply wills and do estate planning for the elderly.
In addition to his law
practice and work with the YLD, Demastus volunteers on two local boards: the UTC Alumni Board, through which he’s also president of the
UTC Gold Council; and the board of directors for the Redoubt Soccer Association, a youth soccer league.
“I played soccer in high school, and loved it, so that’s a fitting place for me to use my legal abilities in the community,” he says.
Despite having a busy schedule, Demastus makes sure he leaves enough time to recharge his batteries by doing things he enjoys, whether it’s bicycling, woodworking or scuba diving off the coast of South Carolina.
“I don’t have a lot leisure time, but when I can get away, I like bicycling,” he says. “My aunts and uncles were really big into bicycling; now anything involving a bicycle is a lot of fun for me.”
Demastus inherited his love of woodworking from his grandfather, while his wife, Megan, is from Georgetown, S.C., where diving is mandatory.
Given that Megan is a lawyer as well, Demastus and his wife have precious little time to get away. Regardless, he says he made the right career choice.
“I very much enjoy the practice of law and, God
willing and the creek don’t
rise, I’ll be doing it for a good long while.”
|
|