Like many husbands and fathers, Alaric Henry wants to spend as much time with his wife and children as he can. But like many other white-collar professionals, he’s also burdened with the pressing need to earn a living. He says striking an equitable balance between the two is “a constant battle.”
Henry has a lot on his plate at work: A litigation caseload of about 150; work weeks that easily top 70 hours; and the responsibilities that come with being a partner at his firm, Luther-Anderson. At home, he has three children in private school, including a daughter in college at Notre Dame.
For a practical man like Henry, there’s only one solution: work hard. But that creates a dilemma. “I have a lot to do, but when I work a lot of hours, I feel guilty for not spending enough time with my family,” he says.
Luckily, being a partner at the firm at which he’s worked for 22 years has given Henry some flexibility in terms of how he spends his time. He uses this trump card on his work schedule to occasionally tip the scales in favor of his family.
“Except for things the courts set, I control my calendar, which allows me to work in my kids’ soccer games and concerts. Having that ability makes a big difference,” he says.
At the end of the day, Henry simply wants to afford his children the opportunities he didn’t have growing up. Born and raised in Detroit, Mich., Henry was a child in a single-parent household headed by his mother. She fell ill while he was in high school, which prompted a move to Jamaica, where his father was living. Upon graduating from school, he returned to the town of his birth, where he earned an undergraduate degree in business administration at the University of Detroit.
Facing a slim job market, Henry took a job as an assistant manager at a Kmart. The hours were long and the pay was meager, so he started thinking about returning to school to earn either a master of business administration or a law degree. He gave the law the nod, packed his cheap suits and his 12-inch black and white TV in his Chevy Cavalier, and moved to Atlanta, Ga., where family, Georgia State University, and more opportunity awaited.
Henry says the decision was “a big fork in life.”
“I anguished over changing employment, going back to school, and moving to Atlanta. I put a lot of thought and prayer into that decision,” he says.
Once settled in, Henry landed full-time work as an insurance adjuster at Safeco and began attending law classes in the evening. The rigors of his schedule prepared him for the career that lie ahead of him.
“I was working all day, then making a 90-minute commute to class, where I would try to stay awake for three hours. Then I spent my weekends studying around the clock. But I was single and on my own, so all I had to do was keep myself alive and breathing,” he says.
Henry sustained himself for the five years it took him to complete his law degree, and then accepted a job offer to work for Luther-Anderson in Chattanooga. He’s been with the firm ever since.
A board certified civil trial specialist who primarily practices insurance defense, Henry has tried about 100 jury trials and handled a wide variety of cases.
“You can buy insurance for any kind of risk, so I’ve handled a lot of different things – construction, premises, employment, automobile wrecks, medical malpractice, products liability, wrongful death, and more. People can come up with all kinds of screwy allegations,” he says.
Although stressful, litigation work has suited Henry well. He enjoys being mentally engaged and likes the freshness of the cases he takes on.
“When I get up in the morning, I want to be thinking about what I have to do, not that I don’t want to go to work. Fortunately, the variety of cases I have always provides me with new challenges,” he says.
While Henry likes defending his clients in court, he says most of his work on a case takes place behind the scenes, as he tends to take on complex matters that involve potentially large losses and require a considerable amount of groundwork.
“I spend a lot of time investigating facts, working with witnesses, thinking up strategies, researching the law, and then stepping back and evaluating the case. Do we want to try it? If we settle, what is it worth?” he says.
Henry derives a great deal of satisfaction from his work when the verdict favors his client. He recalls a jury trial in which he secured for a highly distraught client a verdict below the limit of her insurance coverage – and less than the plaintiffs had offered – when it initially appeared as though things could go the other way. Henry says the relief the verdict brought the woman was worth every minute he had spent working on it.
“My work is fulfilling. I believe I’ve made positive contributions to my clients,” he says.
For all of the good the law can do, one thing about the practice of it bothers Henry – what he says is a common disregard for the truth.
“What other people sometimes do in a lawsuit bothers me. The truth doesn’t seem to matter much anymore; people play fast and loose with the facts. I’ve caught people cold in a fraudulent case, and nothing happened to them.”
Despite an occasional bout of pessimism, Henry says the good-hearted attorneys with whom he works has kept him from becoming disillusioned with the law. “One thing I like about practicing law in Chattanooga as opposed to a place like Atlanta is it’s less cutthroat. I’ve faced attorneys in contentious cases, and then a couple of years later, our kids played soccer together,” he says.
Soccer provides Henry with an opportunity to change the subject from work to the few personal pleasures he allows himself. In addition to attending his kids’ sporting events, he takes photographs of the games for the teams’ Facebook pages. His face brightens as he talks about setting up the pages and packing them with photographs for the other parents to view. Henry also plays in an adult soccer league. “At 50, I think I’m the oldest player in the league,” he says.
Henry is also a school board chairman at Notre Dame High School and an active member of St. Stephen Catholic Church, where he serves on the parish council. He says his faith is a big part of who he is.
“As I’ve matured, I’ve gained more of an appreciation for my faith and how it applies to my roles as a parent and a responsible member of society. As a parent, I want to be a good role model. I don’t want to tell my kids what to do, but show them. I’m not perfect, but I want to instill good Christian values in them because it’s important for them to do more than simply use the benchmark of our legal standards. With regard to this community, I want to be sensitive to the needs of others and do my best to live out Christ’s example.”
Henry is clearly a product of his upbringing. His father worked 70 to 80 hours a week as a restaurateur, right up until the day he died on the job of a heart attack at the age of 77. What’s more, Henry and his mother struggled financially, which taught him to be self-reliant. Therefore, the importance he places on being a good example for his children is no surprise.
“I want them to know where I came from and the challenges I overcame. My parents instilled in me the importance of hard work, but also of working smart. And my extended family instilled in me the ambition to work three times as hard as the next person to get to where I need to be,” he says.
Although Henry fights to strike an equitable balance between work and family, one thing is obvious upon spending time with him: he is a lawyer, a husband, and a father. That the scales tip more often in favor of his office than his home shows only how important the latter is.