Walker, Pruden Justice Funds Dedicated

4ALL Service Day Video - 03.04.11

Article Date: Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Norfleet and Cindy Pruden are joined by their children, Matt and Haines.

The North Carolina Bar Association is pleased to announce the establishment of Justice Funds honoring Clarence W. “Ace” Walker and J. Norfleet Pruden III of K&L Gates LLP in Charlotte. The restricted funds within the NCBA Foundation Endowment have been earmarked for the Legal Aid of North Carolina Fund.

 

Walker and Pruden are past presidents of the NCBA and longtime partners with Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman, which combined with K&L Gates in 2008. The Justice Funds were underwritten through a $100,000 contribution from the firm.

 

The Walker family unveils Justice Fund plaque.

The LANC Fund, established by the NCBA Board of Governors in January 2007, is a named fund within the NCBA Foundation Endowment restricted to Legal Aid of North Carolina. The K&L Gates contribution was made in conjunction with the 4ALL Campaign to expand the provision of legal services to the poor provided by LANC.

 

The Justice Funds were unveiled during a special dedication ceremony at the N.C. Bar Center on Tuesday, May 5, with NCBA President Charles Becton presiding.

 

Peter Kalis, left, and Gene Pridgen of K&L Gates.

General remarks were provided by Eugene C. Pridgen, administrative partner for the Charlotte office of K&L Gates, and Peter J. Kalis, chairman and global managing partner for the firm.

 

A distinguished panel of NCBA past presidents introduced the honorees. E. Osborne Ayscue Jr. and John Q. Beard spoke on behalf of the Clarence W. “Ace” Walker Justice Fund. Henry P. Van Hoy II and Judge Allyson K. Duncan of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals introduced the J. Norfleet Pruden III Justice Fund.

 

Formal unveiling of the Justice Fund plaques was conducted by Allan Head, executive director of the NCBA.

 

A Justice Fund is a named endowment that honors those North Carolina lawyers, past and present, whose careers have demonstrated dedication to the pursuit of justice and outstanding service to the profession and the public. One or more contributors may establish a Justice Fund to honor a colleague, family member or friend.

 

Justice Paul Newby shares moment with Norfleet Pruden.

Lawyers designated and honored by the creators of a Justice Fund receive special recognition in the form of a permanent plaque and biographical sketch maintained at the N.C. Bar Center.

 

One or more contributors may establish a Justice Fund to honor a colleague, family member or friend through a combined gift of $35,000. Restricted funds such as the Justice Funds honoring Walker and Pruden are fulfilled upon attainment of a $100,000 threshold.

 

The NCBA Foundation Endowment was established in 1987 to enable the foundation to fund programs and activities to better serve the public and the legal profession. As of January 2009, the endowment had awarded grants totaling $3,073,635 for 410 projects.

 

Ace Walker, left, visits with Justice Robert Edmunds.

Biographical information, derived from materials submitted for permanently display at the N.C. Bar Center, provides the following glimpse into the lives and careers of these two exemplary North Carolina lawyers.

 

Clarence W. “Ace” Walker

Clarence W. (“Ace”) Walker was born on July 19, 1931 in Durham, the son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Ernie F. Walker. He graduated salutatorian from Hope Valley High School in 1949. He then entered Duke University, where he completed his Bachelor of Arts studies in three years and was elected a member of Phi Eta Sigma and Phi Beta Kappa.

 

In 1953 he entered Duke Law School, where he served as Note Editor of the Duke Bar Journal and President of the Delta Theta Phi legal fraternity. He graduated from Duke Law School in 1955 at the top of his class and was elected a member of the Order of the Coif.

 

Walker accepted employment after law school with the Wall Street firm of Mudge Stern Baldwin & Todd. He and his wife, the former Ann-Heath Harris, moved to New York City where he worked as an associate of that firm until 1959. He then moved to Charlotte and joined the firm of Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman as an associate, and he became the fifth partner of that firm in 1962.

 

He is currently of counsel with the firm of K&L Gates, LLP, with whom Kennedy Covington merged in 2008. In his 54 years of practice, Walker has focused primarily on corporate, securities and public utility law.

           

Walker is an active member of the North Carolina Bar Association, where he has served in a number of leadership positions, including its presidency in 1977-78. He served for 25 years on the board of directors of Lawyers Mutual Liability Insurance Company.

 

In 2006 he received the John J. Parker Award, the highest honor bestowed by the North Carolina Bar Association.

 

Walker is also an active member of the American Bar Association, where he has served in a number of leadership positions, including state delegate, and member of the Board of Governors. He served as chairman of a number of committees of the American Bar Association House of Delegates and Board of Governors. He is also a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.  

 

Walker has served in numerous civic, cultural, educational and governmental capacities. He was a member and vice chairman of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, chairman of the Board of Managers of Charlotte Memorial Hospital (now Carolinas Medical Center); chairman of the Board of the Carolinas Healthcare Foundation; chairman of the Charlotte Parks and Recreation Commission; campaign chairman and then chairman of the board of the United Way of Southern Piedmont; chairman of the Charlotte and of the North Carolina March of Dimes; member of the Board of Trustees of North Carolina Central University; member of the Board of Directors of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra Association; and member of the Boards of Visitors of Duke Law School and Johnson C. Smith University.

 

 

J. Norfleet Pruden III

Norfleet Pruden was born in Edenton on Sept. 1, 1948, the son of J. N. “Prudie” Pruden, Jr., and his wife Helen. Prudie Pruden was a lawyer in Edenton, as had been his own father (the first James Norfleet Pruden) and grandfather (William Dossey Pruden, a founding member and the sixth president of the North Carolina Bar Association).

 

Other lawyers in Pruden’s family included his great-uncles Dossey Pruden and Harry McMullan (N.C. Attorney General from 1938-55), as well as the ancestor for whom Norfleet was named, James Norfleet.

 

When Prudie Pruden died in 1956, it was observed by the local bar that it was the first time since 1869 that there was not a Pruden practicing law in Chowan County. Norfleet Pruden, then eight years old, was admonished to take up the family trade and return to Edenton as a lawyer some day.

 

Pruden graduated from John A. Holmes High School in Edenton in 1966 and went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead Scholar, where he graduated in 1970 with a degree in history. From there, prompted as much by his unreadiness to begin a career as by the draw of family tradition toward a career in the law, he went on to the University of Virginia and obtained his law degree there in 1973.

 

After being admitted to the North Carolina bar in the summer of 1973, Pruden joined the law firm of Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman in Charlotte, where he had been a summer associate the year before. At the time, he was the 20th lawyer in what was one of the state’s largest and fastest growing law firms and what later became part of the international law firm K&L Gates.

 

The year before, Kennedy Covington had hired two new associates who were working in litigation (Wayne Huckel) and real estate (Maynard Tipps), so by default Pruden was assigned to practice in the area of business law.

 

Pruden knew little about business law, or even about business, when he joined the firm, but under the patient tutelage of two of North Carolina’s finest business lawyers, Marcus Hickman and Clarence “Ace” Walker, he slowly began to learn the ropes. It also helped that some of the young (at least then-young) hands at Kennedy Covington, such as Don Lassiter, Zach Smith, Bill Drew and Raleigh Shoemaker, took him under their wings and brought their talents and examples to bear in his professional development.

 

And, as time went by, Pruden also had the opportunity to learn from some of the other fine business lawyers who came to Kennedy Covington, such as Gene Pridgen and Steve Rhyne, and to serve as a mentor to talented younger lawyers such as Hank Flint, Sean Jones and Kevin Stichter, from whom he learned more than he taught.

 

As was the case with many business lawyers of his generation, Pruden’s practice, especially in the early years, was broad and varied: corporate, securities, banking and commercial lending, public finance, consumer credit, commercial, antitrust and trade regulation, and public utilities law were just some of the areas he covered. He even became somewhat of an authority on the regulation of the dairy industry, representing one of the firm’s clients regularly before the North Carolina Milk Commission.

 

After a time, the chairman of the commission, a dairyman from eastern North Carolina, took him aside and said, “Norfleet, you’re gettin’ to be a right good milk lawyer.”

 

There wasn’t a lot of future in milk law (the firm’s client withdrew from the industry as North Carolina dairy farms made way for subdivisions), so Pruden gradually began to focus his practice on general corporate representation, securities regulation, and mergers and acquisitions work, which are the three primary areas in which he currently practices.

 

During the 1980s and 1990s, he had the lead role in taking a number of the firm’s largest clients public as well as serving as outside general counsel once they became public companies. He also represented underwriters in various offerings, including tax-exempt offerings by hospitals, and has been involved in numerous merger and acquisition transactions. In the mid-1990s, Pruden also began representing private equity groups and their portfolio companies, and serving as special counsel to independent committees in connection with major corporate transactions and internal investigations.

 

In his law firm, Pruden has worn many hats, including at various times chairing Kennedy Covington’s business law department, recruiting committee, associates committee, professional responsibility committee, partnership admission committee, and various ad hoc committees, as well as serving on its executive committee and other firm committees. Since Kennedy Covington’s combination with K&L Gates, Pruden has served as the Charlotte liaison for the Firm’s Corporate Practice Group.

 

Early in his career, Pruden took an interest in bar activities, especially with the North Carolina Bar Association. He has regularly been a speaker at NCBA CLE programs on topics of business law, professionalism and ethics. He has served on numerous NCBA committees. He has been particularly active with the Business Law Section, which he chaired in 1991-1993.

 

Pruden later served on the NCBA Board of Governors, and in 2002 became president of the NCBA. Since then, he has continued to serve on various NCBA committees, as well as on committees of the Mecklenburg County Bar. Pruden also has been involved with the American Bar Association in various activities, and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

 

Pruden has also participated in various civic, church, political and social activities and organizations over the years. He has served as senior warden at Christ Episcopal Church and chaired its Rector Search Committee and its Seeds of Hope Fund, among other church activities. He is serving (2008-10) as chair of the UNC Friends of the Library, which provides alumni support for the UNC Libraries at Chapel Hill.

 

Pruden and his wife Cindy, who were married in 1971, have two children: Matt, a lawyer (fifth generation!) in Charlotte; and Haines, who owns and operates a wedding and specialty cake business in Charlotte.