RALEIGH – Campbell Law School alumnus David Gantt JD ’81 has been awarded the 2023 Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award from the North Carolina Bar Association (NCBA). Gantt was honored at the organization’s annual conference, June 22-24, in Wilmington.
Gantt, a 1981 Campbell Law School graduate and Board Certified Workers’ Compensation Legal Specialist, has spent more than 30 years representing injured and disabled clients in the mountains of western North Carolina. In addition to Workers’ Compensation, Gantt practices in the areas of Social Security disability and personal injury law.
Active in the legal community, Gantt is a partner in David Gantt Law Office in Asheville and holds memberships to the 28th Judicial Bar, North Carolina and America Bar Associations. He has served as a sustaining patron and in President’s Club for North Carolina Advocates for Justice as well as being a member of the National Association of Social Security Disability Claimant’s Representatives. He has served on the Board of Governors for North Carolina Advocates for Justice, as chair for Disability Advocate Section of N.C. Advocates for Justice, on the Metropolitan Sewage District Board, on the N.C. Employment Security Commission as governor (2008-2012), on the Asheville Buncombe Community Relations Council and on the Asheville Airport Authority, according to Gantt’s bio on his firm’s website.
Gantt also strives to take part in his local community. He recently completed 20 years of service on the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, on which he served as chair for the past eight. He currently holds board memberships with the Martin Luther King Jr. Committee as well as a governor appointment on the Mountain Resources Commission. He also serves as chairman for the March of Dimes Babies Walk and has been directly involved with United Way and Eblen Charities Foundation.
The H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award, established in 2006 by the NCBA Foundation’s Professionalism Committee, recognizes attorneys who demonstrate the “Renaissance Lawyer” qualities embodied by Judge McKnight, former chair of the Professionalism Committee who died in 2004 while serving on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
The award seeks to recognize those North Carolina attorneys whose trustworthiness, respectful and courteous treatment of all people, enthusiasm for intellectual achievement and commitment to excellence in work, and service to the profession and community, inspire others, according to the NCBA website.
ABOUT CAMPBELL LAW SCHOOL
Since its founding in 1976, Campbell Law School has developed lawyers who possess moral conviction, social compassion, and professional competence, and who view the law as a calling to serve others. Among its accolades, the school has been recognized by the American Bar Association (ABA) as having the nation’s top Professionalism Program and by the American Academy of Trial Lawyers for having the nation’s best Trial Advocacy Program. Campbell Law boasts more than 4,800 alumni, who make their home in nearly all 50 states and beyond. In 2023, Campbell Law is celebrating 45 years of graduating legal leaders and 14 years of being located in a state-of-the-art facility in the heart of North Carolina’s Capital City.