The Tennessee Bar Association has elected Brittany Thomas Faith of Grant, Konvalinka & Harrison, General Sessions Judge Alexander McVeagh, Justin Faith of Gearhiser, Peters, Elliott & Cannon and John Carreras of CommonSpirit Health to serve on the executive committee of the board of the Tennessee Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division.
The TBA YLD is composed of attorneys younger than 36 or in their first five years of practice and is dedicated to serving the professional needs of young lawyers. The TBA YLD is also the “service arm of the bar.”
Young lawyers across Tennessee elected Faith as vice president of the TBA YLD for 2020-21. She will serve as president-elect the following year and then as TBA YLD president in 2022-23.
Faith is a founding member of Grant Konvalinka’s immigration practice group and focuses her practice on business, family and individual immigration matters.
Beginning with her president-elect year, Faith will sit on the TBA’s board of governors. She is also responsible for planning and developing YLD projects and the budget proposal for her presidential year.
Faith currently serves as the chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s midsouth chapter. She has also served on the AILA’s national nominating committee and Annual Conference Family Track committee.
In addition, Faith has been active in the regional and state legal community, serving as past president of the Chattanooga Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division and a past president of the South East Tennessee Lawyers Association for Women.
Through her bar work, Faith has led several statewide immigration-focused service projects. Her terms on the board of La Paz of Chattanooga inspired many of these projects.
The TBA YLD’s executive committee elected McVeagh as East Tennessee governor. He has served as judicial liaison and as Hamilton County’s representative to the board since 2015 and is currently president-elect of the CBA YLD.
Tennessee’s youngest judge, McVeagh was appointed as Hamilton County General Sessions Judge by Gov. Bill Haslam in 2017. He previously practiced with Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel, the Tennessee Public Defenders Conference and the Tennessee Senate Judiciary Committee.
Governor Bill Lee recently appointed McVeagh to help make changes to the state’s criminal sentencing laws through his Criminal Justice Reform Task Force.
McVeagh also serves on the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission and Technology Oversight Committee, where he’s helping to draft standards for electronic filing in all courts throughout Tennessee.
The CBA and the CBA YLD have previously honored McVeagh as Volunteer of the Year for his service on the board of Legal Aid of East Tennessee and for his role in organizing Hamilton County’s local high school mock trial competition for the past four years.
The TBA YLD’s executive committee elected Justin Faith to lead the group’s finances as its treasurer. This will be his third consecutive term serving on the executive committee as YLD treasurer.
Justin Faith practices primarily in the areas of civil business litigation and estate and probate administration.
He has been active in the Chattanooga, Tennessee and American bars for many years, serving in various leadership capacities and volunteering through service projects.
Justin Faith is a graduate of the TBA’s Leadership Law program, a recipient of the TBA YLD’s President’s Special Recognition Award and an honoree of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Pro Bono Service Award.
The TBA YLD executive committee elected Carreras to be its secretary. Carreras is an in-house corporate health care attorney for a national nonprofit health care system and serves as dedicated legal counsel for CHI Memorial HealthCare System in Chattanooga.
This will be his second year on the TBA YLD board, as he currently serves on the Membership Services Committee.
Carreras has served in a number of roles within the ABA, ABA YLD and various local bar associations since graduating law school in 2012. He attended law school at the University of Denver and undergrad at the University of Florida, after which he moved to Chattanooga in 2017.
Source: Tennessee Bar Association