Legal Department

Responsibilities
Advisory Role
The City Attorney's Office represents and advises the Mayor, City Council, City boards and commissions, and City officials and departments in legal matters pertaining to their office and City operations, which include various municipal utilities and an airport.

Legal Document Preparation
In addition, the City Attorney's Office prepares legal opinions, ordinances, resolutions, contracts, and other documents requested by City officials and implements the legal aspects of various policies and programs established by the City.

Legal Representation

The City Attorney's Office serves as counsel and represents and appears for the City and boards, commissions, and agencies of the City in civil and administrative proceedings. The City Attorney's Office also handles prosecutorial litigation as part of the City's traffic and code enforcement and manages all other litigation in which the city may be involved.

City Attorney
Andy Wright was appointed as Lebanon’s interim City Attorney in early 2004, and became the City’s full time City Attorney in May of 2004.

Experience
Prior to his appointment, Mr. Wright was an associate attorney at Lowery & Lowery (now Lowery, Lowery, & Cherry), located on the Lebanon Square, and at Farrar & Bates, LLC, in Nashville.

Mr. Wright has represented numerous cities across the State of Tennessee, but as Lebanon’s City Attorney, he devotes full time to providing the highest quality legal service to the City of Lebanon.

Paralegal
Beth Ehlert, the City’s paralegal, does an outstanding job of assisting with litigation management and legal drafting. Ms. Ehlert has also very ably taken on the role of office manager of the City Attorney's Office, which involves making purchases for the office, managing the various contracts for office equipment and subscriptions, and handling the routine aspects of the office’s budget.

Office Commitment

The City Attorneys Office is committed to providing the highest quality legal representation possible to meet the present and future needs of the City of Lebanon in an efficient and effective manner.

The Office continues to maintain an open door policy to encourage continuous communication between City departments and their legal representative and will suggest education and training to City departments in areas where there appears to be repeated incidents of legal exposure. Thank you for affording us this opportunity.