The role of a midfielder in soccer is fluid - sometimes pressing forward on offense, sometimes back-pedaling on defense, but always (always!) working.
The similarities between playing midfielder in soccer and being a busy corporate attorney are not lost on Logan Threadgill, a litigation associate at Chattanooga's Chambliss, Bahner, Stophel, P.C. law firm.
For the first couple of decades of his life, the 33-year-old Knoxville native was a soccer prodigy. Threadgill played Division I soccer at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he was a four-year letterman. Between his junior and senior years in college, Threadgill was a midfielder on one of the first Chattanooga Football Club (CFC) teams to play for a national championship.
"I spent the lion's share of my youth, up through college, training and playing," Threadgill says. "When those days were over, and I had to hang up my (soccer) boots, I had to take that energy and drive somewhere else.
"I think about all the lessons your learn (from sports) being able to work with people, having discipline, drive, goals."
Threadgill was tested in college when he tore an ACL in a pre-season soccer workout and endured a year of rehabbing his knee before re-establishing himself as a team leader and helping lead his Wofford College crew to the NCAA tournament - still a historical high-water mark for the program.
After college, Threadgill felt the need to transition to a durable professional career. The trigger to pursue law was an internship in Washington D.C. working as an intern in the office of then-U.S. Rep. John L. Duncan.
Almost overnight, Threadgill went from training on the soccer pitch to giving constituent tours on Capitol Hill. He remembers one of his first days in Washington being pulled aside by Rep. Duncan to join a group of lawmakers for lunch.
"I remember being on a trolley with six congressmen, and thinking, 'How did I get in this position?' Pretty cool." he says.
Washington D.C. may have the highest concentration of law school graduates of any city in America, and Threadgill began to feel drawn to the profession. After leaving Washington, he worked in Knoxville for a time at a mortgage company while saving money to attend the University of Tennessee College of Law.
Logan Threadgill
* Occupation: Attorney at Chambliss, Bahner, Stophel, P.C.* Age: 33* Hometown: Knoxville, Tennessee* Marital status: Engaged to be married in February
After earning his degree, he moved to Chattanooga and eventually landed a position as a litigation associate at Chambliss, Bahner, Stophel, P.C., one of the city's oldest law firms.
Today, his duties include representing construction companies, financial institutions and a variety of other commercial clients. His professional goals include making partner at his firm someday and becoming more of a specialist in construction industry matters, he says.
Threadgill says the most satisfying part of his work is helping people. It's easy for attorneys to get lost in process and forget that legal matters are often unsettling, or even life-altering, for their clients, he says.
"What's the most satisfying is to solve significant, life-changing problems for the client," Threadgill says.
Staff Photo by Matt Hamilton / Logan Threadgill at Chambliss, Bahner and Stophel law firm on Monday, Nov. 2, 2020.Threadgill is also active in his firm's Chambliss Startup Group, which helps Chattanooga's emerging entrepreneur community navigate business laws.
"You get to meet successful, up-and-coming entrepreneurs who are faced with interesting issues," Threadgill says of the Startup Group. "Through that, you are navigating intellectual property rights, tax issues. Chattanooga has become a startup hub."
While a native Knoxvillian, Threadgill says he has become comfortable in Chattanooga, and enjoys the city's growing nightlife and restaurant scene. He and his fiance plan a February wedding. And, who knows, he might even become a soccer dad some day.
"I would like that, yeah," he says.