Tell Me A Story: by Cathy Shuck

TELL ME A STORY By: Cathy Shuck

East Tennessee Children’s Hospital

When Nick McCall announced his “retirement” from The Last Word, we at DICTA knew that we could never replace him or his column. But we also knew how important it was to continue to share stories from around our bar. Particularly during the last year, with the physical separation that COVID has forced upon us, we’ve been reminded how important it is for us to be able to connect with our colleagues on a personal level.

So, taking our cue from the advice Nick gave in his final column to cherish each other, this month we are launching a continuation of the theme, called “Tell Me a Story.” We invite you to keep sharing your stories: What experiences have been important to you? How did you get where you are today? Who inspired you or helped you along the way? What are the moments in your life that have informed and influenced your legal career? What do you do for fun?

Since I volunteered to follow Nick as the curator of this final page, I will go first.

People often ask me how I became the General Counsel for one of our region’s most treasured institutions, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. It was an indirect path that I could not have planned or predicted, involving both good luck and bad luck.

When I went to law school nine years after receiving a BA in English, I was looking for a more interesting job. I had worked in human resources and as a policy analyst at the California Medical Association, but still wasn’t sure what I wanted to Do. I went to law school because it seemed like getting a Master’s Degree in Undecided.

After law school I clerked for the Ninth Circuit, had a fellowship with the NRDC, and then moved to Tennessee for my husband’s job, where I had the opportunity to clerk for Justice Riley Anderson on the Tennessee Supreme Court. I had done pretty well with my Master’s in Undecided.

In early 2006, I became pregnant with my second child. Unfortunately, the pregnancy didn’t go well and on June 10 I gave birth to a 530-gram baby at 24 weeks gestation. Our tiny daughter, Celia June, spent 221 days in Children’s Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) where she received incredibly skilled and loving care. She became well-known among all of the staff in the NICU for her feisty spirit and love of music. Unfortunately, she was ultimately unable to overcome all of the challenges resulting from her extreme prematurity and she passed away in January 2007.

At about the same time, Justice Anderson retired and I left court service to work in private practice, eventually landing at Wimberly Lawson where I practiced employment law—a good fit with my HR background. Then in early 2008, I got a call from Children’s Hospital asking if I would join a new group, the Family Advisory Council. The Council is comprised of parents and guardians of current and former patients, and serves as an advisory body to the hospital, bringing the family’s perspective to the table.

I was excited about the opportunity to give back to Children’s, and enthusiastically joined the Council. A couple years later, I also volunteered to serve as a community member on the hospital’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), the body that reviews research protocols to ensure they comply with ethical principles. As a member of the IRB I met the hospital’s General Counsel, Bruce Anderson. Bruce always appeared stern during the IRB meetings, and we rarely spoke. If you had asked me, I would have told you that he probably didn’t know my name. In the spring of 2013, Bruce called me seemingly out of the blue and invited me to lunch. He explained that he had recently gotten approval to hire another lawyer. He described what sounded like a fascinating job handling a variety of things for Children’s, including employment law issues. He asked me if I thought he’d be able to fill the job. Absolutely, I replied, and began rattling off a list of people I thought would be good candidates. He listened to me patiently and finally said, “yes, but would you be interested in the job?” I stammered that I would love the job, but that surely he could find many other, more qualified candidates. I had some of the legal experience he was looking for, but there were vast swaths of healthcare law that I knew absolutely nothing about. There were regulations I had surely never heard of, requirements I had no idea about, and the daunting alphabet soup of healthcare acronyms. He smiled. “You can learn all that stuff,” he said. “But you have a heart for the hospital. You can’t learn that.”

In July of 2013 I started work as Children’s Hospital’s Assistant General Counsel. As anticipated, there was a lot I didn’t know and much that I had to learn on the fly. Seven years later I am still learning every day. But I am always guided by the memory of my daughter and the knowledge that the work I do, in a small way, supports the care of children and families.

In the fall of 2016, Bruce announced his intention to retire, and I was given the opportunity to succeed him as General Counsel. In an act of incredible grace and generosity, Bruce offered to “switch places” with me for the final year of his tenure. We literally traded titles and offices: I became the GC and he was the Assistant. I will always be grateful to Bruce for that transition, and for teaching me the most important leadership lesson: remember to bring your brain, but lead with your heart.

That’s my story: now it’s your turn. If you have something to share or suggest, please get in touch. Nick may have given us his Last Word, but let’s keep the stories going.

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