Editorial
Front Page - Friday, July 16, 2010
Employment law expert calls career ‘a happy accident’
David Laprad
John Phillips Jr., is an employment law attorney practicing with Miller and Martin in Chattanooga. He calls his nearly 40-year career a “happy accident.”
- David Laprad
Accidents happen. It’s a fact of life. People try to avoid them, but they’re not always a bad thing. Take the career of employment law attorney John Phillips Jr., for example.
He calls his career, and a shift about midway through his years of service, “happy accidents.”
“I’d always been interested in law. One of my dad’s best friends was a lawyer, and he used to take me to court, which piqued my interest at an early age,” Phillips says.
While an undergraduate student at Lipscomb University, Phillips took some preparatory law courses, enjoyed them and decided to pursue a career as an attorney.
Like many of the lawyers who fill the ranks of the Chattanooga bar, Phillips went to law school at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Upon graduation in 1974, he moved to Chattanooga, where he tested the waters at two prominent firms.
“I hadn’t figured the kind of law on which I wanted to concentrate, so I did a variety of things, which was a good experience. Then someone sued one of our clients for sex discrimination, which no one had heard about,” he says.
Although the Civil Rights Act had become law in 1964, Phillips says attorneys were slow to assess and act upon the legislation, which forbad discrimination on the basis of sex and race when hiring, promoting and firing an employee. Luckily, Phillips had taken a course on labor and employment law, so the case was his.
“I’m an accidental employment law lawyer. But once I got into it, I liked it,” he says.
Not long after Phillips staked his claim in employment law, the number of discrimination claims increased exponentially, and Phillips found himself with more and more work in his newfound area of practice. That was fine with him, as it kept him in contact with people and guaranteed him a lot of time in courtrooms.
It also gave Phillips the opportunity to work on a number of interesting cases, such as sexual harassment lawsuits.
“There are usually pretty specific allegations about what someone has done to another person, and trying to get to the bottom of what happened can be difficult because sexual harassment is typically a one-on-one situation. The trials can also be challenging because you have to delve into the personal lives of the people involved, which can get dicey,” Phillips says.
Phillips also found the age discrimination cases with which he dealt fascinating.
“If you fire an (elderly) employee who’s been with you for 30 years, that person becomes a sympathetic figure to a jury. It can be difficult for you to articulate how someone with that kind of tenure suddenly became no good,” he says.
In addition to handling complex disputes on behalf of employers, Phillips worked with companies to develop and implement personnel policies, compliance programs, affirmative action plans, alternative dispute resolution programs, reductions in force and collective bargaining agreements.
As time went on, Phillips found himself spending less time in courtrooms and more time helping clients “nip problems in the bud.” As part of his effort to teach human resources professionals how to avoid problems, Phillips wrote articles and books, produced training videos, moderated symposiums and conducted audio conferences and seminars.
His latest effort to share his highly regarded expertise in employment law is a Web site titled “The Word on Employment Law,” found at www.wordonemploymentlaw.com. To keep the content fresh, he offers weekly tips, courtroom news and even employment law humor.
Phillips says this new facet of his career has been tremendously satisfying.
“As employers have come to realize the expense involved in defending a discrimination case, they’ve learned the value of training their people to do the right thing,” he says. “I’ve done various programs for supervisors and managers, who are often the ones accused of doing something wrong. Sometimes, they do make mistakes, but without knowing it, so teaching them the basics of employment law has been especially rewarding.”
Phillips served as managing partner of Miller and Martin from 1997 to 2002. He then went to work as the vice president and deputy general counsel at Coca-Cola Enterprises in Atlanta, where he was responsible for an alternative dispute resolution program, the ethics and compliance hotline, labor and employment litigation and more.
In 2007, he returned to Miller and Martin, where he remains today.
There’s no doubting Phillips has had a significant impact in employment law. Since 1995, “The Best Lawyers in America” has listed him as one of the top attorneys for labor and employment law. In 2010, the publication added to this distinction by naming him Lawyer of the Year. In addition, his peers chose him for inclusion in the 2009 edition of “Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business,” Business Tennessee Magazine has called him one of the best labor and employment lawyers, and made the list of Mid-South Super Lawyers in 2007 and 2008. Not only that, but Phillips has also received the Justice Joseph Henry Award for Most Outstanding Article in the Tennessee Bar Journal, the Top Ten Training Award from Human Resources Executive Magazine and a four-star rating (out of four) from Training & Media Review for his video, “Danger Zones for Supervisors.”
Phillips says Chattanooga has been good to him and his family, so over the years, he’s donated his time and talents to various community organizations.
In addition to serving as president of the Boys and Girls Club of Chattanooga, the Chattanooga Kiwanis Club and the Chattanooga State Technical Community College Foundation, he has chaired the Chattanooga Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Tennessee Aquarium. He’s also been on the board of Allied Arts, Girls Preparatory School, Creative Discovery Museum, the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce and the Hamilton County Juvenile Court Commission.
“Early on, I worked with lawyers who did a lot of community service, and who encouraged me to do the same, so it’s been my pleasure to give a little back,” he says.
Phillips has done the same for his profession. In addition to serving on the board of governors of the Chattanooga Bar Association and as chairman of the labor and employment section of the Tennessee Bar Association, Phillips is a member of the American Bar Association, the state bar of Georgia and the Tennessee Bar Foundation, of which he is a member of the board of trustees. He’s also edited the Tennessee Employment Law Update, a monthly newsletter for employers, for 20 years.
Although Phillips has accomplished a great deal during his 36 years as a lawyer, he and his wife of 41 years, Mufti, still managed to raise three children. If Phillips could go back and change one thing, though, he’d spend more time with his kids when they were young. “They did not follow in their father’s footsteps. Early on, I fell into a workaholic mode, and I think they decided there were better ways to make a living. I wish I could have some of that time back,” he says.
Regardless, Phillips is proud of his children. He smiles as he talks about how one became a journalist, another an echocardiographer and another a first grade teacher.
If they become as good at their work as their father became at his, they’ll have a lot to be proud of when they have nearly four decades of service to look back on. And if they turn out to be as respected as their dad, a lot of people will be hoping they’re a long way from done.
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