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Public: Recent News

Honoree Ozzie Ayscue displays award, joined from left by Clark Smith, Erna Womble and Bill Womble Jr.

E. Osborne “Ozzie” Ayscue, Jr., former president of the American College of Trial Lawyers and past-president of the North Carolina Bar Association, is the 2007 recipient of the H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award.

The award was presented Friday, June 22, at the NCBA Annual Meeting in Asheville.

Proposed by the NCBA Professionalism Committee and adopted by the Board of Governors last year, the award recognizes attorneys who demonstrate the “Renaissance Lawyer” qualities embodied by Judge McKnight, who died in 2004 while serving on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of N.C. 

The Professionalism Committee initiated the establishment of this award in an effort 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.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS PRESENTATION OF AWARD

Among Judge McKnight’s many contributions to the legal profession in general and the NCBA in particular was his service as chair of the Professionalism Committee. Erna A. P. Womble, who succeeded McKnight as chair of the Professionalism Committee and presided over the establishment of the award, and Bill Womble Jr. presented the award.

Ayscue served as president of the NCBA in 1984-85. He is also a past president of the Mecklenburg County Bar. He has inspired the best personal and professional qualities of lawyers by his daily practice, his mentoring of others, and his service to, and presentations to audiences of, the bar.

Ayscue and his wife, Emily, have raised four accomplished children, and, together, they have served their church, schools and the Charlotte community.

In 2005, Ayscue received the American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for the 4th Circuit. The Mecklenburg Bar Foundation’s professionalism award was established in 2004 and named in honor of Ayscue, who was also the initial recipient.

A Union County native, Ayscue graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1954, where he was Phi Beta Kappa. Following service in the Navy, he earned his law degree from UNC in 1960, where he was Order of the Coif and Editor in Chief of the Law Review.

After passing the bar in 1960, Ayscue joined what is now Helms Mulliss & Wicker, PLLC, where he currently serves as Of Counsel. He is a founding member, and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors, of the Center for Law and the Humanities.