The Look in Brief

Memphis’s Community Legal Center names Jerri Green interim executive director

By: J. Holly McCall - January 4, 2021 8:00 pm

Exterior of Community Legal Center, Memphis. (Photo: Google)

Attorney and former candidate for Tennessee House of Representatives Jerri Green will serve as the Interim Executive Director of the Community Legal Center in Memphis, the organization announced Monday.

In a written statement, the CLC said, “We are confident Jerri will provide strong leadership and continuity during this time of transition as the CLC searches for a permanent Executive Director.”

Green joined the CLC in 2016 and currently serves as director of community engagement. She takes over from retiring Executive Director Anne Mathes and will assume the position in March.

“I’m honored to be asked to lead this amazing organization. Working for greater access to justice has been always been the focus of my career, and I am thrilled to get the chance to continue serving my community,” Green wrote in an emailed statement.

Green was the Democratic nominee for State House District 83, in which she faced off against incumbent Republican Rep. Mark White. White won with 54% of the vote to Green’s 46%. She is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and received her law degree from Georgetown University. Green is involved with the Memphis Bar Association, Moms Demand Action, the Association for Women Attorneys and the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative, among other groups.

Founded in 1994, the CLC provide civil legal services to those with limited means and those at risk, including populations not served by other legal aid agencies. Clients include Memphis’s working poor, whose income falls below the living wage level, immigrants seeking aid with a variety of immigration issues and victims of elder abuse. In partnership with the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis, the CLC operates a pro se — “for oneself” — legal clinic to help self-represented litigants prepare for divorce filings.

As the CLC proceeds with a search for a permanent executive director, the organization is also hiring an associate executive director.

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J. Holly McCall

Holly McCall has been a fixture in Tennessee media and politics for decades. She covered city hall for papers in Columbus, Ohio and Joplin, Missouri before returning to Tennessee with the Nashville Business Journal. Holly brings a deep wealth of knowledge about Tennessee’s political processes and players and likes nothing better than getting into the weeds of how political deals are made.