Hutchison Alumna Earns Memphis Bar Association Honor

Shea Sisk Wellford ’87 received the Judge Jerome Turner Lawyer’s Lawyer Award from the Memphis Bar Association.
The award recognizes a Memphis attorney who has practiced law for more than 15 years and embodies professionalism, civility, and courtesy. An accomplished attorney and shareholder at Martin, Tate, Morrow & Marston, P.C., as well as a member of the Executive Committee of the firm, Wellford represents large and small businesses, financial institutions, and individuals in civil litigation. She previously served as president of the Memphis Bar Association, the Mid-South Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, and the Leo Bearman, Sr. Inn of Court. 

As an attorney, she is well-versed in making a case for her clients but realizes that respectful communication and civil discourse are vital in law and life. “It’s important to be able to have civil discourse, to be able to truly listen to someone without formulating a response in the moment or interrupting. And then to be able to communicate back to them in a way that they can listen to you so that you can have a discussion that may or may not get you to an agreement, but that may get you closer toward an understanding of the other person’s perspective,” she said.

Her success reflects not only her legal skill and leadership, but also the values instilled during her time at Hutchison: resilience, critical thinking, and integrity. “The more cases I tried, the easier it became. It wasn’t like flipping a light switch, but it was just the mindset of, ‘okay, I can do that.’ I just kept pushing forward as the cases got larger and more important from a monetary and business issue standpoint. It definitely was a learning process,” she said.

We couldn’t be prouder to celebrate this achievement. We featured Wellford and her career in the January 2024 edition of the Hutchison magazine. Read more about how her Hutchison background made her confident that she could be effective and go anywhere she could imagine.
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