Everyone loves a good story. The Bard Room is a new executive and CLE meeting venue located in the heart of Nashville’s Fifth Avenue of the Arts District. Opening in Spring 2025, The Bard Room will provide the space to collaborate, foster, and support the connection of trial practice with the art of storytelling.

While trial lawyers tell their clients’ stories in a way that compels juries to deliver justice, songwriters tell their stories in three minutes or less. The Bard Room will provide the space, the songwriters, and the instructors to help lawyers understand how to powerfully achieve emotional depth with an economy of words, enabling justice to be delivered in ways they may have never considered.

“Bards” date back to the era of Shakespeare. A bard is a poet who writes impassioned and lyrical verse. Over time, the word evolved to describe tribal poets and singers who were gifted in composing and reciting verses about heroes and their deeds. Thus, The Bard Room Founder, Jeff Roberts, Nashville native and long-time plaintiff trial lawyer envisioned a place in his hometown where trial lawyers could comfortably come together with peers, mentors, younger lawyers seeking mentorship, songwriters, and other performers to discover the passion inherent in writing and telling a story well. In fact, to become the bard in their own courtrooms across the country.

With a theatre-in-the-round, a rooftop classroom overlooking the historic Hermitage Hotel, and within walking distance to the Ryman Auditorium, The Bard Room will provide quality instructors and performers at Continuing Legal Education (CLE) programs that will improve lawyers’ practice of law and honor the value of play, cherish the importance of taking time to exhale, and revel in the laughter and joy of a performance well done, all in the heart of Nashville. We welcome you and look forward to the exploration!

– The Bard Room Team