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Butler Snow Attorney Receives State Bar Award for Pro Bono Work

Memphis, Tenn. – Melody McAnally, an attorney in the Memphis office of Butler Snow, received the Mississippi Volunteer Lawyers Project (MVLP) Curtis E. Coker Access to Justice Award at the Annual Convention of the Mississippi Bar Association.   The Access to Justice Award goes to an individual who provided outstanding pro bono legal services during the previous year.  It is awarded annually by the MVLP and the Mississippi Bar Association.

This marks the second time McAnally has been recognized for her pro bono work.  In 2003, she was awarded the Pro Bono Award by the Jackson Young Lawyers Association for her work representing a grandmother in a child custody action.

McAnally was recognized primarily for her work on behalf of Ms. Gracie Watson, a client referred to McAnally from the MVLP as one of more than 5,000 low income citizens assisted by the MVLP each year.  McAnally represented Ms. Watson in a divorce and child custody action pending in Mississippi involving allegations of desertion, adultery and domestic violence. 

Shortly after Ms. Watson filed her divorce action, her husband was arrested for aggravated assault, allegedly stabbing Ms. Watson more than 25 times in broad daylight in a retail parking lot before numerous witnesses.  Newspaper reports state that a bystander held the alleged perpetrator at gunpoint until law enforcement arrived, stopping him from lighting the gasoline he had poured on Ms. Watson after stabbing her. 

While Ms. Watson was in intensive care recovering from her injuries, McAnally successfully moved to hold Ms. Watson’s husband in contempt of a temporary order of protection from domestic abuse, which McAnally had sought just days before Ms. Watson’s attack. 

McAnally also represented Mississippi foster children as a member of the legal team representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit known as Olivia Y. v. Barbour. The suit was filed in 2004 on behalf of the approximately 3,500 abused and neglected children in the custody of Mississippi’s Department of Human Services (DHS).  A settlement agreement mandating top-to-bottom reform of Mississippi’s long-failing child welfare system was reached in this federal class action suit.  

McAnally is a cum laude graduate of the Mississippi College School of Law and was Editor-in-Chief of the Mississippi College Law Review and a member of the Moot Court Board.  She earned her undergraduate degree at The University of Mississippi.  McAnally is licensed to practice law in Tennessee and Mississippi.

Melody McAnally (left), Butler Snow attorney, and Shirley Williams, executive director of the Mississippi Volunteer Lawyers Project (MVLP), with the Access to Justice Award presented to McAnally by the MVLP and the Mississippi Bar Association.  The award recognizes an attorney who provided outstanding pro bono legal services during the previous year.