Faculty Profile: Judge Robert Childers

JUDGE ROBERT L. CHILDERS has been the presiding judge of Division 9 of the Circuit Court since 1984 and chair of the Civil Pattern Jury Instruction Committee since 1991.  Judge Childers is a past president of the Tennessee Judicial Conference and the Tennessee Trial Judges Association.  He has also served as a Special Judge of the Tennessee Supreme Court Workers' Compensation Panel and the Tennessee Court of Appeals. He is a past chair of the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, created to assist lawyers and other legal professionals with addiction and other personal problems.  He is a founding member, past president and Master of the Bench of the Leo Bearman Sr. Inn of Court.  He was recognized as Outstanding Judge of the Year by the Memphis Bar Association in 1986, 1999, and 2006, and by the MBA Family Law Section in 2005.   He was recognized as Outstanding Judge of the Year by the Shelby County Deputy Sheriffs Association n 1990 and he received the Judge Wheatcraft Award from the Tennessee Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence for outstanding service in combating domestic violence (2001).  He has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Memphis (2002), the Justice Frank F. Drowota III Outstanding Judicial Service Award from the Tennessee Bar Association (2012) and the Excellence in Legal Community Leadership Award from the Hazelden Foundation (2012).   He has also been a faculty member at the National Judicial College at the University of Nevada-Reno, and the Tennessee Judicial Conference Judicial Academy, and has been a frequent lecturer and speaker at CLE seminars and before numerous schools, civic, church and business groups in Tennessee and throughout the nation.