Tracy Chain
LRIS Administrator
505 Main Street, Suite 50
P.O. Box 2027
Knoxville, TN 37901-2027
KBA Main Phone: (865) 522-6522
LRIS Direct Phone: (865) 522-7501
Fax: (865) 523-5662
tchain@knoxbar.org
How do you help our members?
The KBA Lawyer Referral & Information Service, while functionally primarily oriented toward the public and to our participating attorneys, is definitely a service to all KBA members, because we offer a reliable and trustworthy option for any attorney to offer a potential client whose needs they cannot meet. By referring a caller to the KBA LRIS, our members thereby help a fellow KBA member to build their practice. For our participating attorneys, we provide a first point of contact for a potential client, determine if the caller is seeking to hire a private attorney, and providing a brief overview of what to expect at consultation. I like to say that we’re “your other front office person,” particularly for those attorneys who don’t have a lot of support staff. I also nurture my relationships with panel members to better understand their professional needs and goals and connect them with KBA staff and programs to help achieve them.
What is a typical day for you?
One thing I really love about my job is that no day and no caller is truly the same as any other, so the details of each day are different. However, the typical piece is that I’m consistently at my desk each day, answering referral service calls from the public and processing referrals through the website. I am privileged to also be staff liaison for the KBA Access to Justice Committee, and process media releases and volunteer recruitment emails related to the legal advice clinics for which the KBA is a partner. While the LRIS assistant is on shift answering calls, I attend to projects such as examining referral data to ensure we are providing effective and efficient service, reviewing public-facing educational information on the KBA website or attending to the LRIS’s Facebook page along with other administrative tasks.
Tell us more about yourself.
I’ve spent all but the first four years of my life in Knoxville. While in college, after a brief and pathetic attempt to work in a mall fast food joint, I worked as an admissions counselor at St. Mary’s Medical Center. From there I went to the front desk at a pediatrician’s office where I learned the basics of medical recordkeeping and transcription, which would be my career for over 15 years. In early 2009 I was struggling to make ends meet since voice recognition was replacing much of the work of MTs, and I began working at the KBA as the part-time LRIS Assistant. I discovered that every job I had held previously had prepared me for the referral intake work, and I loved it. I was blessed with an opportunity to join KBA full time in late 2009. In my free time I do a lot of reading and hanging out with my family.
