Meet: Juvenile Court Custody Clinic Coordinator Evan Baddour

When Evan Baddour was a student at Nashville School of Law, he knew one thing: he didn’t want to practice family law when he graduated. Fast forward five years later, and family law is one of his main areas of focus in his Pulaski, Tennessee, law practice.

“I assumed those cases had too much drama, between parents and their kids. The reality is that for a new lawyer, that’s the most available type of case to take – whether court-appointed or divorce work,” he said.

Baddour, who teaches the Juvenile Court Custody Clinic at NSL, now makes a point to tell his students to be open to where their practice will take them. “It’s funny how certain we are about things. I was certain I didn’t want to do family law,” he said. It didn’t look appealing, and it didn’t seem like the type of work I would want to take home with me. But it’s important work.”

The clinic is a one-hour elective course designed for third- and fourth-year students to represent indigent clients in actual Davidson County Juvenile Court cases, which includes modifying existing parenting plans or creating new ones.

“The unique nature of this course is it’s like moot court in that students get to practice courtroom lawyering live and apply all the things they’ve been learning the first three years of law school,” Baddour said. “But unlike moot court, they’re representing real parents. And they’re operating under a limited license under Rule 7, under the supervision of licensed attorneys. These are clients who otherwise would be representing themselves, so they’re really providing a service to indigent folks in the Nashville area. And I love seeing how exciting it is for our students – when they start to realize this isn’t all about them, that their work is going to determine a child’s custody situation.”

Baddour was in the courtroom recently when the judge made his ruling, and the father stood up and hugged both students assigned to his case. “He was clearly grateful, but you could see it was an important moment for the students too. This was probably the first time they had been thanked sincerely by a client for the work they had done,” he said. After graduating from NSL in 2018, Baddour decided to return to his hometown of Giles County to practice with his brother, Colby Baddour, a 2011 NSL graduate.

“They say you shouldn’t partner with someone unless you really trust them. I can’t imagine anyone I trust more than my brother,” he said. “We definitely have different strengths and perspectives. We have different world views, in some cases. He likes to say he keeps me grounded, and I keep him thinking. We make a good team.”

Baddour, a graduate of University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is fluent in Spanish, volunteers to provide legal services to the disenfranchised of Middle Tennessee and has been called for a consult on several immigration cases of Spanish-speaking clients. He is also an elected Giles County commissioner.

He successfully argued a court case before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in 2021 which made national news headlines. In the State of Tennessee vs. Tim Gilbert, Baddour argued that Gilbert, a Black man being tried in the Giles County Courthouse, didn’t receive a fair trial for his convictions because significant historical symbols, including Confederate flags, were present in the jury room. His convictions were reversed, and he was granted a new trial.

“Those items are no longer in the jury room, fortunately. But subtle, systemic racism can still exist in our court system,” Baddour said.