Nicely: Helping people with business is 'in my blood'

Chattanooga attorney specializes in employment law

Staff photo by Doug Strickland / Attorney Maury Nicely is a member of the Chattanooga law firm of Evans Harrison Hackett PLLC. He specializes in employment law.
Staff photo by Doug Strickland / Attorney Maury Nicely is a member of the Chattanooga law firm of Evans Harrison Hackett PLLC. He specializes in employment law.

When it comes to the practice of employment law, Chattanooga attorney Maury Nicely says he strives is to keep his clients out of trouble on the front end.

"If you advise employers well, you keep them out of the ditch," says Nicely, who has more than two decades of experience in the field.

Nicely, 48, is a member of Evans Harrison Hackett PLLC, the Chattanooga law firm he helped found in 2010. He quips that employment law is "the closest thing to getting into criminal law without the criminals."

The Scenic City native says he wasn't always focused on the law. The McCallie School graduate went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville where he majored in English.

"I was going to get a Ph.D and teach college," he says. "I decided it didn't feel right."

Nicely says he took "a gap year" in Nashville and worked at a sports magazine before deciding to attend law school at the University of Georgia. He had friends at Georgia and liked the college atmosphere in Athens, he says.

After graduation, he and his wife, Jennifer, who is from South Georgia, looked at going to Atlanta or returning to Chattanooga. Back in the city, he joined the firm Miller & Martin where he worked in the labor and employment law department.

"That's where I cut my teeth," says Nicely, whose parents were business people with his mother's side owning Standifer Nissan in Chattanooga.

He says that helping business people with employment issues is key as it's often one of the most difficult parts of owning a company. At the same time, he sees business owners helping employees make a living and providing a fulfilling workplace.

"That kind of work is very interesting and colorful," Nicely says, who for years traveled across the country working with companies.

In 2009, Nicely went to work for Volkswagen in Chattanooga, which a year earlier had announced it was building its only United States assembly plant at Enterprise South industrial park. He says he was the plant's first in-house labor attorney.

MAURY NICELY

* Background: Born and reared in Chattanooga* Education: Bright School, McCallie School, Vanderbilt University, and law degree from the University of Georgia* Age: 48* Work: Member of Evans Harrison Hackett law firm; attorney for Volkswagen; Miller & Martin* Family: Married to Jennifer, two children, 17 and 15

Nicely stayed there for about a year, helping to put the fledgling operation's workplace policies in place.

"It was an invaluable experience to me," he says. "I got to see things from the other side of the coin - how the inside of a company worked from an employment perspective."

The attorney recalls that VW at the time was starting from square one.

"It was building employment policies, training, workforce. It was a great learning experience to get the view of the entire process," Nicely says. "It was a great step in my field."

Wade Hinton, vice president of diversity and inclusion at Chattanooga-based insurer Unum Group, says he and Nicely worked together at Miller & Martin and later at Volkswagen.

"As a lawyer, Maury's a pragmatist," says Hinton. "His storytelling abilities, with a mix of wit and intellect, often won the day with our colleagues."

After leaving VW, Nicely and a group of lawyers founded Evans Harrison Hackett with other veteran attorneys. The firm, located at 835 Georgia Ave., has 10 attorneys, he says.

With his experience, Nicely was tapped to lead a group in early 2014 called Southern Momentum, started by business interests and individuals to give a voice to VW plant workers opposed to the United Auto Workers' effort to unionize the factory.

"We helped them get heard," he says.

Southern Momentum was re-formed this year and helped lead the campaign to convince VW workers to vote against representation by the UAW. Chattanooga workers voted 833 against to 776 in favor of the union in the June election.

"I have some clients who have union relationships and others who are nonunion and have been approached about becoming a union workplace," he says.

The fastest growing part of his practice involves disability discrimination, retaliation lawsuits and harassment claims in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Nicely says.

But law isn't his only interest as he has written three books. Two of them are about walking tours, one on Chattanooga and the other on East Tennessee, he says.

His latest is about former Teamsters chief Jimmy Hoffa and his connection with Tennessee, including at his Chattanooga trial in 1964. Hoffa was convicted in Chattanooga of attempted bribery of a grand juror, and was sentenced to eight years. After serving his sentence, Hoffa vanished in late July 1975.

Nicely says he's working on another book about John T. Wilder, a Union colonel for whom Wilder Tower in Chickamauga Battlefield is named.

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