There’s a photograph on a shelf in Everett L. “Bo” Hixson, Jr.’s office at Chartwell of himself and three other generations of males in his family, including his late father, Everett Layne Hixson; his son, Everett L. “Rett” Hixson; and his grandson, Everett L. Hixson IV.
The same individuals occupy a photograph in Rett’s office. In the portrait, the eldest Everett Layne Hixson is cupping the family’s fourth Everett in his hands and beaming at the infant.
Rett’s photograph also occupies a shelf in an office at the Chattanooga branch of Chartwell, a law firm with small teams of attorneys across the U.S. A short stroll along a single corridor can take a visitor from that picture to the one in Bo’s office, upon which they’ll see that they’re the same image. For Bo and Rett share more than a name and a photograph; they also share a profession.
This was a source of either humor or dismay to the eldest Hixson, who raised three children, including two sons who became attorneys and a daughter who was a nurse. (Bo’s brother, George, is the other attorney.) “He’d say, ‘My daughter is the honest one,’” recalls Bo, 67. “He was an engineer and didn’t care for lawyers.”
Whether the first Everett was joking or truly displeased with the profession his sons chose remains clear only to the family. What Bo makes plain to anyone who will listen is that he’s exceedingly proud of Rett and the decision his son made to follow in his footsteps.
“Rett was a quick study in law school and had remarkable insight for a rookie attorney,” Bo remembers. “Watching him develop, and then seeing the success he’s had this year in bringing in new clients, has been remarkable. It’s been great, as his father, to see all of that happen.”
Rett followed so closely in his father’s footprints that if the pair had been walking in snow, it would have appeared that there was only a single traveler – save for the set of prints that peeled off when Rett attended law school. Bo is an alumnus of the University of Tennessee College of Law, while Rett attended the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law in Memphis.
“I’ve been practicing law for 10 years, and all of those years have been with dad,” notes Rett, 37. “This is our third firm together.”
After Rett graduated from Memphis in 2014, he joined the firm at which his father was a named partner: Duncan, Hatcher, Hixson & Fleenor. The two later moved a downtown mile to Evans Harrison Hackett and practiced there until moving to Chartwell in 2022.
“We thought the opportunity at Evans Harrison would be good for both of us, so we traveled there together,” explains Bo.
“And then Barret (Albritton) recruited me to Chartwell,” adds Rett.
“I could have stayed at Evans Harrison,” continues Bo. “It’s a good firm with good people – and I was comfortable there. But it was more important for me to practice with Rett, so when Chartwell recruited him, I tagged along.”
“I’ve always worked with my dad,” Rett says. “I looked for work in Memphis, but I wanted to come home. My entire family lives here, and I didn’t want to be on the other end of the state. Plus, I’d clerked with dad both summers, so I was able to jump in as soon as I graduated.”
When Bo and Rett talk of practicing together, they’re referring more to proximity than teaming up to address legal matters. A 38-year veteran of the legal profession, Bo has extensive experience in general commercial litigation; meanwhile, Rett maintains a defense litigation practice and represents insurance carriers, businesses and individuals in a variety of matters.
“Chartwell has encouraged me to narrow my practice for marketing purposes, but if someone calls me with a litigation problem, I can handle it,” Rett clarifies.
Father and son do occasionally join forces to serve long-standing clients, as they’ll do in a hearing scheduled to take place in June.
“Since we’re both partners at Chartwell, we don’t work together on many things because of the cost that would be involved,” says Rett. “But we still collaborate from time to time and we talk every day about the issues we’re handling.”
While Rett’s career choices have allowed him to continually work under the same roof as his father, he originally considered a different profession: teaching. An ardent student of history, he earned a liberal arts degree at UT and considered sharing his passion with the generation of students that would follow him, but he became concerned about their general lack of interest, he says.
“I had good experiences with my teachers at McCallie School, and I had great professors at UT, so I thought about teaching. But I didn’t want to end up at a small college in the middle of nowhere teaching U.S. History Survey, hoping there were one or two students in the group of 200 who felt the way I did about history. I’d always loved reading, writing and outlining arguments, so I figured I was destined to be a lawyer.”
Bo saw the seeds of a legal mind sprouting in Rett years before his son decided to attend law school. On one occasion, one of Rett’s elementary teachers summoned Bo to the school to discuss his son’s argumentative nature. When the teacher suggested Rett would make a good attorney someday, Bo replied, “Well, I’m a lawyer.”
Rett does recall other attorneys playfully discouraging him from pursuing the law.
“I’ll never forget going on a rafting trip with the Shumacker folks when I was 10 years old. I was in a boat full of attorneys and their spouses, and someone asked, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ When I said, “A lawyer,” everyone in the boat started saying, ‘No, no, no!’”
Bo continued to support his son throughout his academic career, however, including during an overwhelming L1 year of law school.
“I relived my first year of law school through Rett. The hardest parts were the phone calls he made when he was ready to jump off a bridge. I thought those were in my past, but they came flooding back,” Rett remembers. “Rett is much smarter than I am, though, and he raised issues as a first-year student that impressed me.”
“I remember reading a long article you’d written about torts and understanding it,” Rett says, speaking to his father. “That was a point of pride for you. I remember you telling your friends about it.”
Bo passed on more than a grasp of torts to his son over the years. As Rett thinks backs on a decade of working down one hall or another from his father, he considers the other lessons he’s learned.
“It’s important to be available to your clients; return their emails and phone calls. Also, be forthright about what you can you handle. At the same time, stepping beyond your comfort zone as an attorney helps you to grow. You don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself, but that’s how you expand your practice.”
As father and son muse on their years of working together, Rett laments the notion of his dad’s eventual retirement.
“We like working with each other, and it’ll be weird not to. But at some point, dad’s going to retire. That’ll be an odd feeling – not being able to pop into his office to ask him a question. I’m not looking forward to that.”
That day, should it come, is not even kissing the horizon. Instead, Bo has found new vigor in becoming a Rule 31 Mediator. After representing clients in dozens of mediations, he’s looking forward to serving as an arbitrator between disputing parties.
“I’m trying to shift my practice in that direction,” he says.
“I don’t want to push dad to work longer than he needs to, but mediation is a great option for him,” Rett adds. “He has a diverse practice history that can resonate on many different levels for people.”
Bo will still be close by the other Everett L. Hixsons even after he hangs up his spurs. Not only did he recently move into the community in which his son lives – Black Creek – father and son seize every opportunity to enjoy each others company, whether they’re fly fishing, hunting or watching UT sports.
With Father’s Day approaching Sunday, June 16, Bo looks at his son and say he hopes he passed on a few things of value. Rett replies that he absolutely did.
“Rett would have been fine without me, but taking this journey together has been good for both of us,” Bo says.
Nearby, Everett the Fourth beams back at his great-grandfather in a photograph of four generations of males in the family. The eldest Everett might not have liked lawyers, but rumor has it that the newest Everett loves to read.