Like many lawyers, Karen McGuffee’s business card includes a “J.D.” after her name. And like her colleagues across Chattanooga, she did more than earn the degree and pass the bar; she worked for her stripes, cutting her legal teeth on appointed cases in Juvenile and Chancery Courts.
But if someone were to try to hire McGuffee to handle a case today, she’d probably turn him or her down. That’s because there’s something else on her business card – something to which she devotes all of her time and attention: “Associate Professor.”
McGuffee is a licensed lawyer, but she’s first and foremost a teacher of the law. As the head of the Legal Assistance Studies program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, she teaches a variety of law courses and arranges for fellow local attorneys to teach as adjuncts.
“I like to talk, and I like the law, but I never knew I’d like to teach the law until I started doing it. I might not feel this way if I was teaching little kids. This is a college setting, and these are adults,” she says, laughing.
McGuffee was working child support cases for the state of Tennessee when a couple of attorneys who were adjuncts at UTC asked her to substitute for them. She was reluctant, but agreed.
“I wasn’t sure if teaching was my calling. But they persisted, and I gave it a shot. I really liked it,” she says.
Bit by the education bug, McGuffee started teaching as an adjunct. When a full time positioned opened up in 2000, she applied for it and got it.
Over the years, McGuffee has taught courses ranging in topic from family law, to contract law, to criminal law. She also enlists adjuncts to teach specific topics. “I try to find attorneys who would be a good match for the subject matter. If someone practices corporate law, they’re going to be more qualified than me to teach it,” she says.
Through her recruitment efforts, McGuffee has convinced public defender Ardena Garth to teach criminal law, Rusty Gray to teach employment law, and Sherri Fox to teach ethics.
“I have a great group of adjuncts. Like me, they enjoy teaching, but unlike me, they’re also practicing law in the real world,” McGuffee says.
The Legal Assistance Studies program at UTC has about 50 majors, making it one of the smaller programs at the university. But there’s still a good mix of students, McGuffee says.
“Some of our students are fresh out of high school, while others have come back after a divorce or are changing careers. About one third want to work as paralegals at a law firm, about one third want to work as paralegals outside of a law firm, and about one third are planning to go to law school. I like the diversity.”
A Chattanooga native, McGuffee earned a criminal justice degree at UTC and then attended law school at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. While waiting for bar results, she clerked for Chancellors Hal Peoples and R. Van Owens. Although McGuffee clearly likes the law, she’s unable to pinpoint what drew her interest to it.
“I don’t know why it appealed to me. It didn’t come to me in a dream, and I don’t have any lawyers in my family. My dad worked at DuPont and my mom was a nurse. But I was always interested in it,” she says.
Although McGuffee professes a love for teaching, she says a part of her misses the practice of law, especially seeing and interacting with other attorneys at the courthouse. “When I go over there to see my husband and walk the halls, I realize I miss seeing everyone’s face. I’m over here in my own little world, and in a sense, I feel out of the loop,” she says.
Feeling disconnected from her colleagues doesn’t make McGuffee want to pick up the practice of law again, though. The only thing that would lure her back into the fold would be the right case walking through her door at the right time. “I don’t think I could teach and practice, and do both well, so I’m going to stick with teaching. I love it,” she says.
Although McGuffee has chosen to not practice law, she has remained an active servant of the local legal community. She has served on the advisory board of the Chattanooga State paralegal program, served as jury commissioner for Hamilton County, sat as magistrate for Hamilton County Court, and spoken at a number of paralegal association functions and at several area schools.
McGuffee also likes being active in her community. She has: served as the speaker for Tennessee Victim Assistance Academy for the past several years; served on the Sarah Project, which helps victims of elder abuse; served on the advisory board for Girls, Inc.; served on the scholarship committee for Siskin Steel; served on the Moccasin Bend Mental Health, Human Rights, and Ethics committee; and worked with the Domestic Violence Coalition.
McGuffee says another reason she’s reluctant to start practicing law again is she likes the flexibility teaching gives her. A skilled flutist, she enjoys playing with a local volunteer ensemble that performs for different groups around town, such as people in assisted living facilities. She also likes attending UTC sports events throughout the year. And teaching gives her the ability to attend the functions in which her 16-year-old daughter, Jordan, participates.
McGuffee’s husband will be familiar to many Chattanooga attorneys: Willam McGuffee, the court office of Judge W. Neil Thomas III. The couple met at the courthouse when she was working as an attorney.
Although McGuffee is not a practicing attorney, her colleagues throughout the city benefit from her efforts when they hire paralegals that have gone through the legal assistant studies program at UTC. This is her way of contributing to the practice of the law in Chattanooga. She might stand in front of students rather than judges, but she’s still connected to her fellow lawyers and an attorney at heart.
The “J.D.” on her business card says so.