News & Insights

Lightfoot Managing Partner Reads to First Grade Class, Firm Participates in Book Drive for 2018 Birmingham Reads Day

April 24, 2018

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (April 25, 2018) — Lightfoot, Franklin & White LLC managing partner Melody Eagan participated in 2018 Birmingham Reads Day by volunteering to read to a first grade class at Booker T. Washington K-8 School. Eagan visited the school last week to read the popular children’s book “Pete the Cat: Scuba-Cat.”

The firm also participated in the Birmingham Reads book drive challenge, sponsored by the Birmingham Bar Association. Lightfoot attorneys and staff donated new and like-new books that will be distributed to elementary school students in the community.

Birmingham Reads in an annual city-wide celebration of reading and a collaborative program of Better Basics, the Junior League of Birmingham and Scholastic. Last year, 692 volunteers visited 626 classrooms and read to more than 13,000 students on Birmingham Reads Day. More than 45,000 books were also donated to the children served by Better Basics.

Now in its ninth year, the program is the largest children’s literacy event in the community, bringing guest readers to every kindergarten through fifth grade classroom in the city to read at the exact same time on the exact same day.

Eagan has practiced law at Lightfoot for more than 20 years and is the firm’s first female managing partner. She focuses her practice on product liability and personal injury cases. Eagan serves as regional counsel for a number of clients and has successfully tried numerous cases to verdict throughout the Southeast. She served as president of the Alabama Defense Lawyers Association and is a member of the Defense Research Institute, where she has served as a State Liaison for the DRI Women in the Law Committee.