Ernestine Lipscomb
Founding attorney and director
Ernestine opened Outpost and still takes the first call on Tuesdays. She argues Social Security hearings and decides which claims the clinic can carry.
Before law school, Ernestine worked in a hospital records office, where she learned how a chart gets written and how it gets lost. She has read medical files in every state of order since. She started Outpost so that someone in Clarksville would read yours too, and she's the reason the first visit is an hour long with no clock on the wall.
Takes
- Social Security hearings
- Reading medical records
- Clinic director
Credentials
Ernestine's admissions and schooling
Bar admissions
Tennessee
1983
Courts
U.S. District Court, Middle District of Tennessee
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Education
J.D., University of Memphis School of Law
1983
B.A., Austin Peay State University
1979
Memberships
Tennessee Bar Association
Languages
English
How Ernestine came to this work
Ernestine spent her first years in practice at a small general office, where disability claims were the cases nobody wanted: long, paper-heavy and paid late. She took them anyway, and found that clients who understood each step stayed with the claim when it got slow.
Outpost grew from a card table in a church fellowship hall into an office of its own. She still keeps the card table in the back room, and it's where she reads the first letter with each new client.