A student from each of Tennessee's four law schools has been chosen to receive a scholarship from the Tennessee Judicial Conference Foundation
Mary Hamm, a student at the University of Tennessee College of Law, is recipient of the first annual $1,000 Houston M. Goddard Scholarship. Goddard, who died April 2, was presiding judge for the Tennessee Court of Appeals. He had served in the judiciary for nearly three decades and was a graduate of the UT College of Law.
The first annual $1,000 William H. Williams Scholarship has been awarded to Christopher Wilson of the Memphis College of Law. Williams, a retired Criminal Court judge in Memphis, died December 13, 2003. He was a member of the judiciary for nearly 30 years.
Other TJC Foundation scholarship winners are Mark Colter of the Nashville School of Law and Joni Poitier of the Vanderbilt University College of Law.
Trial and appellate court judges from across Tennessee established the Tennessee Judicial Conference Foundation in 1995 to provide need-based scholarships to law students in Tennessee. The foundation is supported entirely through private gifts, pledges, memorials, shirt and cap sales, and an annual golf tournament held in memory of the late Circuit Court Judge Dick Jerman, Jr., of Alamo, who died in 1999.