About me
Russell Fowler, a 10th generation Tennessean, is Director of Litigation and Advocacy and Managing Attorney at Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET) and since 1999 has been adjunct professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). In 2005, he was selected UTC’s Outstanding Adjunct Professor by the faculty. Fowler earned his law degree at the University of Memphis in 1987 and served as the law clerk to Chancellor Neal Small of the Chancery Court of Tennessee at Memphis. He was also with a leading civil litigation firm in Memphis for a decade and was regularly appointed special chancellor, once for a three-month period. He joined LAET management in 1997. Fowler has many publications on law and legal history, including for the Smithsonian Institution, the ABA, the Journal of Supreme Court History, the New England Law Review, and the Tennessee Bar Journal. He writes the column “History’s Verdict” for the bar journal and is the 2023 recipient of the TBA’s Justice Joseph W. Henry Award for Outstanding Legal Writing. In 2016, he was presented the B. Riney Green Award by the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services (TALS) for promoting inter-program cooperation and strengthening the provision of legal aid in Tennessee. He is a Fellow of the Tennessee Bar Foundation and has taught continuing legal education courses across Tennessee on Chancery practice, Tennessee civil procedure, and legal history.
