Faculty Profile: Rae Anne Smith

Rae Anne Smith is an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands' Tullahoma office.  She is a 2008 graduate of the Nashville School of Law, where she received the Founder’s Award for being first in her class. She has a Bachelor in Social Work degree from Harding University and a Master of Science in Social Work from the University of Tennessee. Before attending law school, she worked for ten years in the public child welfare system. She is a member of the Cooper’s Inn Honor Society and was a student member of the Harry Phillips American Inn of Court. While in law school she interned with the Tennessee Department of Human Services’ General Counsel’s Office; clerked with the Tennessee Office of the Attorney General; and worked full-time in the Legal Aid Society’s Nashville office through the end of 2008 as a law clerk and grant writer. She joined the Legal Aid Society’s Columbia office in 2009 and transferred to the Tullahoma office in 2012. She leads the Legal Aid Society’s Gilbert Family Fellowship which focuses on cases involving children and young adults. She is past Chair and past Executive Council member of the Juvenile and Children’s Law Section of the Tennessee Bar Association. She is an appointed member and past President of the Tennessee Joint Task Force on Children’s Justice and Child Sexual Abuse and past Chair of that organization’s Court Improvement Committee. She is also a past member of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Court Improvement Program’s Law Committee, which focuses on laws and rules affecting children. She served as co-chair of the committee that revised the Tennessee Rules of Juvenile Practice and Procedure. She is a member of the Coffee County Foster Care Review Board. In 2011 she received the Hope House Outstanding Attorney Award for her work on behalf of victims of domestic violence.