Tim Chinaris

Biography

Timothy P. Chinaris is Professor of Law, and former Associate Dean, at Belmont University College of Law in Nashville, Tennessee. Professor Chinaris teaches courses in legal ethics, torts, insurance law, and sales. Before joining the faculty at Belmont, he held similar positions at other law schools. Professor Chinaris is licensed to practice law in Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, and Texas, and is admitted to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. 

Professor Chinaris was Ethics Director of the Florida Bar from 1989-1997.  His responsibilities included managing the Bar’s popular “ethics hotline” service, which annually answers almost 30,000 calls and emails from lawyers with questions about ethics and professionalism.

Professor Chinaris holds a bachelor’s degree cum laude in Business Administration from Florida State University, received his J.D. with Honors from the University of Texas School of Law, and earned his master’s degree in Library and Information Studies from Florida State University.   After graduating from law school, he clerked for the Texas Court of Appeals. Before joining the Florida Bar he was an associate in Dallas with what is now the law firm of Godwin Lewis PC.

Active in professional organizations, Professor Chinaris chairs the Tennessee Bar Association Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee and is on the executive council of the Tennessee Bar Association General, Solo, and Small Firm Section. He is an author and presenter on professional responsibility for the Tennessee Law Course component of the Tennessee Bar Exam. Professor Chinaris has chaired bar association ethics and professionalism committees in Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida.  In addition to the TBA Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee, he currently serves on the Alabama State Bar Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee, the Florida Bar Professional Ethics Committee, the Florida Bar Committee on Professionalism, and the Florida Bar Student Education and Admission to the Bar Committee.

Professor Chinaris previously served as a public official in two states: as Commissioner on the Alabama Ethics Commission, and Trustee of the Jacksonville Florida Public Library System. He is a Trustee and Vice-president of the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society, a Director of the World War I Historical Association, and a member of the National Advisory Board of the Theodore Roosevelt Association. He was an expert witness for the prevailing party in the first case decided under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Professor Chinaris authors the comprehensive legal ethics website “sunEthics.com” and co-authored the ethics treatise Florida Legal Malpractice and Attorney Ethics.

Areas of expertise: Legal ethics, judicial ethics