5 minute read
Tell Me A Story
TELL ME A STORY By: Hon. Timothy W. Conner
Editor’s Note: We are always interested in hearing from attorneys whose path has led to an interesting or unexpected place. This month’s author, Judge Timothy W. Conner, caught our eye because he holds a position that didn’t exist when he started his legal career: Presiding Judge of the Tennessee Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. Below, Judge Conner explains how he went from being an aspiring aerospace engineer to heading an appellate tribunal.
I was born and raised in Knoxville to parents who knew the importance of hard work and determination. After an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army, my father began working for a trucking company, where he stayed for 33 years until his retirement. My mother graduated from high school, had her first child at 18, raised four children, and worked full time for almost 30 years at a local hospital. They instilled the values of perseverance and loyalty in my three siblings and me. During my freshman year at Farragut High School, I took a speech class to satisfy one of my elective requirements and the teacher took a special interest in me. She encouraged me to join the school’s forensics team, which sent teams to speech, debate, and drama competitions. Although I was much better at speech than drama, I participated in drama by using my piano skills to accompany high school musical productions. My teacher’s passion for public speaking and drama and my involvement in those high school programs were instrumental in me developing the skills I would rely on later in life.
As I considered my options for college, I knew I wanted to experience a different part of the country and was determined to pursue a career in aerospace engineering. As a result, I chose to attend Boston University’s College of Engineering. I left home at the age of 17, flew to a large city I had never visited, where I knew no one, and embarked on my college career. Although I did not know it at the time, I later learned that my parents had taken out a second mortgage to help pay my tuition. They did not think twice about sacrificing to help others; that is another virtue they instilled in my siblings and me.
It took exactly three weeks of my first-year physics class to make me re-think my career path. By the second semester of my freshman year, I had transferred to BU’s College of Liberal Arts and changed my major to Political Science. I graduated from BU cum laude in Political Science with distinction in International Relations.
During my senior year, I attended a career symposium where the Wake Forest School of Law Admissions Director was the featured speaker. Her enthusiastic advocacy of legal careers made quite an impact on me. After graduation, I returned to Knoxville for a gap year, working as a server at Calhoun’s On the River, but I had already decided to apply to Wake Forest for law school. During my first year at Wake Forest, I won the 1L Moot Court competition and was invited to join the Moot Court Board. I competed with Wake Forest’s National Moot Court team my second and third years, discovering a particular love of appellate advocacy.
As my law school career was coming to a close, I had to decide whether to stay in North Carolina or return to Tennessee to practice law. During my gap year, I had met the girl who would eventually become my wife. Because both of our families were in Knoxville and I knew she wanted to return to Tennessee, I decided to apply to law firms throughout East Tennessee and was eventually offered a position with a Chattanooga firm (now known as Leitner, Williams, Dooley & Napolitan). Two years later, when the firm decided to expand, I was given the opportunity to move back to Knoxville and help open a new office.
During the early years of building that new office, the firm had an active and growing workers’ compensation practice. My colleague at the time was not a fan of worker’s compensation law, so he and I agreed to a division of labors where I primarily handled the workers’ compensation cases and he primarily handled the general liability cases. As new attorneys joined our office, I headed up the workers’ compensation section and he led the general liability section. I became a Member of the firm after five years, remaining there for 22 years in total. In 2014, after the Legislature dramatically overhauled Tennessee’s workers’ compensation system, I made one of the most important decisions of my life. Although I loved the people I worked with, and I felt enormous gratitude to a firm that had given me important opportunities throughout my career, the practice of law had begun to wear on me. When I read about the creation of the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, it felt like an opportunity I could not pass up. I had significant experience in workers’ compensation law, I loved appellate advocacy, and I enjoyed the academic aspects of the practice of law. I was extremely fortunate to be one of the candidates selected by Governor Haslam to serve as a judge on the inaugural Appeals Board and am still serving in that capacity today.
I am not a fan of the term “luck,” but I have been extremely fortunate throughout my career. The most important factors that led me to where I am today are the people I met and the relationships I developed along the way. I had several outstanding teachers in high school, college, and law school. I was fortunate to learn to practice law under the tutelage of some amazing trial attorneys. The colleague with whom I established and grew the firm’s Knoxville office, Dana Holloway, is now a well-respected mediator and remains a great friend.
Becoming a judge was not one of my goals, but it is the culmination of several important life choices, and it was made possible by the opportunities presented to me by others. As a judge, it is my job to hear and consider both sides of an argument. As a society, we need to return to the idea that those with different beliefs can be colleagues and friends, and we can discuss those beliefs in a respectful manner that recognizes the legitimacy of differing viewpoints.
P.O. Box 2027 Knoxville, TN 37901
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KNOXVILLE, TN PERMIT NO. 309
