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Benshoff Wins Barrett Award

The North Carolina Bar Association Government & Public Sector Section presented the Grainger Barrett Award for Excellence to Al Benshoff on April 24 during the section’s annual meeting, which was held via videoconference due to the coronavirus restrictions.

Benshoff graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in natural resources and a master’s degree in regional planning. He served as a planner for the Beaufort County (S.C.) Planning Commission and the Town of Cary.

After earning his law degree from North Carolina Central University School of Law evening program in 1994, Benshoff served as city attorney for Lumberton and Concord, retiring from the latter in 2014. Since then he has remained in Concord, where he serves as senior attorney for The Brough Law Firm.

The purpose of this award is to honor an outstanding government or public sector attorney as an exemplar of the excellence, dedication and passion for justice of North Carolina’s government and public sector attorneys. It is named for Grainger Barrett, who served as county attorney for Cumberland County. Barrett died in 2009 and received the award posthumously in 2010, at which time it was named in his honor.

Receiving this award carries special meaning for Benshoff, who got to know Grainger Barrett while working in Lumberton.

“I am honored and not a little surprised to be mentioned in connection with Grainger,” Benshoff said. “The award was a complete surprise. I had no idea I would ever get such recognition. It means a lot to get this award from my peers and colleagues.

“The other city attorneys know what we all do. From my perspective, I just performed my job as a municipal attorney just like so many of my brother and sister city attorneys do, with perseverance and a goal of solving problems for my clients. It is wonderful to be honored by my peers and colleagues. I could not have worked all these decades without the support and encouragement of my wife Kristine and my children, Matt and Laura.”

Benshoff values highly his years of service on the section councils and as legislative co-chair of the Government and Public Sector Section as well as the Zoning, Planning and Land Use Section.

“It was enormously helpful to learn the perspective of other practitioners, especially those who were outside counsel to municipalities and/or represented clients who had issues with cities and towns,” Benshoff said. “In advising the policy makers, it was very helpful to have knowledge of how other’s see the world because it is easy to develop tunnel vision when you have just one client.

“The legislative committees look at all the bills that are introduced, or try to anyway. It was helpful to track what the legislature is doing in almost real time. If I did not belong to and participate in North Carolina Bar Association sections, I would have missed all that.”

Law partner and longtime colleague T.C. Morphis Jr. nominated Benshoff for the award.

“Al Benshoff has spent nearly his entire career in the service of local government, first as a planner and then as a local government attorney,” Morphis wrote. “In the years  I have known him, Al has always his worked with a quiet seriousness and diligence that made him asset for every local government he has served.

“His dry sense of humor and ability to maintain perspective, even in challenging moments, have made him a pleasure to work with.”

Previous recipients of the Grainger Barrett Award for Excellence are: M. Ann Reed (2001), Jo Anne Sanford (2003), John Stuart Bruce (2004), Gill P. Beck (2005), Dan McLawhorn (2006), Ann B. Wall (2007), Curtis B. Venable (2008), Jeffrey P. Gray (2009), Grainger R. Barrett (2010), James B. Blackburn III (2011),  M. Lynne Weaver and Philip A. Lehman (2012), Ellis Hankins (2014), Chief Justice (ret.) Sarah Parker (2015), Frayda Bluestein (2016), Judge Frank Whitney (2017), Thomas A. McCormick Jr. (2018) and Christine Simpson (2019).


This article is part of the August 2020 issue of North Carolina Lawyer. Access a curated view of NC Lawyer or view the table of contents.