RALEIGH – Campbell Law Dean J. Rich Leonard has been selected to receive the 2018 McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award from the North Carolina Bar Association (NCBA). Leonard will be honored at the organization’s annual conference, June 21-24, in Wilmington.
“Dean Leonard’s commitment to professionalism and his years of devotion to the courts of our nation, and to developing the minds and character of future leaders of the bar, make him an ideal recipient of the H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award,” said NCBA Professionalism Committee Chair Greg Scott.
Leonard, who served as a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina prior to becoming dean of Campbell Law in July 2013, is highly regarded throughout the entire legal profession. He was named the 2014 Lawyer of the Year by North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, previously received the American Bar Association’s Robert B. Yegge Award for Outstanding Contribution to Judicial Administration in 2012, and the Director’s Award for Outstanding Leadership in the Federal Judiciary in 1992 among many others. Earlier this month he was elected to serve as chair-elect of the UNC General Alumni Association. Following his one-year term as chair-elect, Leonard will serve as chair beginning in May 2019.
Under his deanship, Campbell Law has vastly increased its already generous scholarship program by adding six new scholarships, including four full-tuition awards, identified nine practice areas with an associated thread of courses for students to follow to become fully developed in the practice of a specific area of law, and partnered with leading local law firms to sponsor competitive advocacy program student teams. The institution also launched the Campbell Law Connections mentorship program, which won a coveted 2016 E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award from the American Bar Association, expanded its clinical programs, including the Stubbs Bankruptcy Clinic and Campbell Community Law Clinic, and provided stipends for recent graduates as they prepare to take the bar exam following graduation. A tireless fundraiser, Leonard helped to secure more than $8 million for the Gene Boyce Center of Advocacy, and invest more than $450,000 in state-of-the-art technology updates to the advocacy center suite and all three courtrooms
Leonard’s own adventures include serving repeatedly as a consultant for the U. S. State Department to emerging judiciaries in sub-Saharan Africa, traveling to Zambia, Tanzania, Namibia, Kenya, and Nigeria more than 30 times. He returned to Namibia last spring at the request of Chief Justice John Roberts to assist the Namibian Chief Justice in drafting legislation to implement a new judicial administrative structure in that country.
“I am humbled beyond measure at this unexpected nod,” said Leonard. “It is especially meaningful because Brent McKnight was a close friend that we all lost too soon. There was no judicial colleague I respected more.”
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 N.C.
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.