PUBLISHED:March 05, 2009

Womble Carlyle endows scholarship at Duke Law

A $100,000 gift from Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice will be used to establish an endowed scholarship at Duke Law School in the firm’s name. The Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice Scholarship will provide annual financial support to law students. Combined with a $30,000 financial commitment it made to the Willem Vis International Moot Court Competition, Womble Carlyle holds the distinction of being the Law School’s most generous law firm benefactor for 2008.

“We are grateful to the lawyers of Womble Carlyle for their generosity and foresight, and we are proud of the longstanding relationship that we share with their firm,” Dean David F. Levi says. “The interconnections between Duke Law and Womble Carlyle trace back to the beginnings of both. We have helped one another to flourish. We are proud of the accomplishments of our many graduates at the firm. And we continue to benefit from the assistance of Womble Carlyle lawyers whether as adjunct faculty, members of our alumni board, or, as in this wonderful instance, supporters of our students.”

Charles R. Holton ’73, a partner in Womble Carlyle’s Research Triangle Park office and a senior lecturing fellow at the Law School teaching Arbitration Law and Practice, led the scholarship initiative.

“We feel like we have a significant relationship in a number of ways with the Law School,” Holton says. “We are one of the top employers of Duke Law grads, and many of our members are grads ourselves, so this is a way of expressing loyalty and gratitude for the training we received as Duke Law students and that continues to go on at the Law School. We want to participate in that and lend support to the ongoing effort.”

Established in Winston-Salem in 1876, Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice now has 11 offices in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic regions. Its 530 lawyers serve national and global clients in such industries as financial services, commercial real estate, information technology, health care, manufacturing, and telecommunications, along with educational institutions and governmental bodies and agencies.

In addition to Holton, partners Sean E. Andrussier ’92, Marilyn R. Forbes, and Deborah J. Hylton ’83 serve as senior lecturing fellows at Duke Law. Andrussier’s practice concentrates on constitutional law, appellate practice and procedure, and providing strategic counseling for clients embroiled in complex civil litigation. Forbes, who is serving her second term on the firm’s Management Committee, specializes in litigation and product liability and heads up Smoking and Health team. Hylton spent 22 years at Womble Carlyle concentrating in corporate and securities law. She was a founding member of the firm’s Research Triangle Park office and a member of the firm’s Management Committee for eight years.