Like any real estate lawyer worth his or her salt, Paul Hatcher can come up with a quick nightmare scenario in which his help would be needed.
“Boundary disputes,” he says. “If you have two property owners side by side, and one of them thinks he owns 20 more feet than the other, things can get nasty. People can be as obsessive about their property as they are about the details of a divorce. They’ll get in each other’s face.”
Hatcher has also handled litigation involving defaults, work-outs, property disputes, and title insurance claims.
Most of the legal work he does, however, involves handshakes and all-around satisfaction.
“The transactional work I do, in which I have a buyer, a seller, and a lender at the table, generally ends with everyone walking away smiling,” he says, “It’s different from the adversarial work I do, in which two sides are fighting it out in court, and no matter what we do, someone is going to walk away unhappy.”
As the owner of Hatcher Title & Escrow Agency, located at the corner of McCallie Avenue and Highland Park, Hatcher enjoys providing the services that enable his clients to close a deal. He even likes the sometimes nitty gritty nature of the work. “Tennessee statute requires that a reasonable title search be performed on the real estate before title insurance can be issued,” he says. “Sometimes, that requires going way back into the old books, which we refer to as going back ‘in the weeds.’”
Hatcher’s other legal work includes commercial lending (he represents several banks in Chattanooga and elsewhere), commercial leasing, zoning and land use, and development (including residential subdivisions, condominiums, and townhomes). In his words, he might be a licensed attorney, but he’s also “a real estate professional.”
Whatever Hatcher is doing, his prime directive is customer satisfaction. Several other local firms also have in-house title agencies, so he does everything he can to provide the kind of service that encourages customer loyalty.
“When a Realtor uses a title and escrow agency, the relationship is based on trust. He or she is placing a tremendous amount of faith in an individual’s service,” he says. “Our customers trust us to close the deal on time. If there’s a delay in the closing, my first inquiry is to make sure this office didn’t cause it.”
Hatcher says choosing a title and escrow agency isn’t the same as picking one retail destination over another because of cheaper prices; he says it’s about feeling at ease. “When you provide a complex service, and do it well, you make your clients comfortable. It takes a while to develop that kind of relationship, and then you have to maintain it.”
Hatcher was first drawn to real estate work as he was clerking at a Knoxville-based law firm. A graduate of Red Bank High School, he had earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and then started taking courses at the College of Law at UT Knoxville. When he wasn’t in class, Hatcher worked for a firm that did real estate work, so he found himself handling closings as a student. Although he also did criminal work and divorces, he gravitated toward business law and real estate.
Hatcher worked for the firm for one year after graduating, and then accepted a job offer from Provident to do commercial real estate work. “It was the same work as before, only with a lot more zeroes,” he says.
The workload might have had an effect on Hatcher, who after six years left Provident to start his own practice. “I got restless and started wondering what else was out there,” he said in a 2010 interview with the Hamilton County Herald.
Hatcher opened his own office in 1989 and was its sole practitioner for 12 years. He then joined forces with attorney Stuart Duncan. “It was a wonderful merger. Stuart and I were great law partners,” Hatcher says. Sadly, Duncan died of cancer in 2006.
While Hatcher might come across as a button-down business type, that’s only part of who he is. To complete the picture, one would have to take into account Hatcher’s roles as husband, father, musician, writer, and volunteer. Hatcher and his wife, Bambi, have been married for 27 years and have five children, including a daughter who’s attending Belmont University College of Law in Nashville. Their oldest has blessed them three grandchildren.
In addition to being a family man, Hatcher is a trained drummer, pianist, and keyboardist who spent the ‘90s performing in a band that opened for several well-known acts, including the Atlanta Rhythm Section. The group also played Riverside, Nightfall, and the 1996 Olympics.
Hatcher also occasionally uses the writing muscles he developed as an undergraduate. His portfolio includes articles published in WWII History Magazine and the fourth chapter of “The World War II Desk Reference,” which Harper Collins published in 2005. His portion of the book contained a nation-by-nation survey of the war experience of each major and many minor participants in the conflict.
Hatcher is also an active member of the Chattanooga Bar Association, serving as secretary of its board and on the fee dispute arbitration committee.
And, when Hatcher has the time, he and his wife enjoy hiking and traveling.
Leisure time, however, is rare for Hatcher, who in addition to everything else teaches real estate seminars for the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors and is a licensed title insurance agent in Tennessee and Georgia. “I’m an agent for Old Republic National Title Insurance Company,” he says. “Once I’ve a done a title search, Old Republic will give a title policy to the buyer. I have a six billion dollar company backing me up.” Hatcher also owns and manages the attractive strip of retail and office space in which his law practice is situated.
While Hatcher’s interests outside of work are diverse, he can’t imagine himself doing something other than practicing real estate law.
“It’s never routine. Closings are different; real estate titles are different; every tract of property is unique,” he says. “It’s what I like to get up in the morning and do.”