Do lawyers in Tennessee have to purchase legal malpractice insurance?
No. There is no requirement that lawyers in Tennessee have legal malpractice insurance.
However, responsible lawyers purchase malpractice insurance to protect their clients from losing money in the event that the lawyer makes an error. Lawyers are human (believe it or not!) and, like anyone else, they make errors. Most of those errors do not result in any demonstrable loss to their clients, but from time to time losses occur. In those cases, malpractice insurance is there to protect the client from financial harm.
Feel free to ask any lawyer that you intend to hire whether they carry malpractice insurance. If the lawyer tells you that he or she does not have insurance, you should give that answer serious consideration before hiring that lawyer.