News Article

GREENSBORO, N.C.—Womble Carlyle attorneys Reid C. "Cal" Adams Jr., Murray C. "Tripp" Greason III and Georgiana L. "Georgi" Yonuschot were honored for their pro bono work at a Monday, April 21st, ceremony.

The three attorneys were among those from Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem recognized by Business Leader Media for their pro bono efforts to aid the less fortunate. Only one other firm had as many attorneys honored as Womble Carlyle.

Adams, chair of the firm's Pro Bono Committee, has a wide-ranging pro bono practice spanning more than 20 years. He is serving his eighth two-year term as President of the Board of Directors of the Legal Aid Society of Northwest North Carolina. Adams is a founding director of Legal Aid of North Carolina and recently finished serving a two-year term as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Legal Aid of North Carolina. He currently chairs the Strategic Planning Committee of Legal Aid of North Carolina. He also serves as a member of the Pro Bono Institute's Law Firm Pro Bono Project Advisory Committee, as Vice Chair of the Chief Justice's Equal Access to Justice Commission and as a board member of the Children’s Law Center of Central North Carolina. He previously served as a member of the Board of Legal Services of N.C.

In addition to his pro bono leadership, Adams has distinguished himself as an advocate of North Carolinians living in need during the past two decades. To date, Adams' wide-ranging pro bono practice has included post-conviction death penalty defense, representation of 9/11 victims before the federal Victims Compensation Fund, advocacy for North Carolina children who were not receiving adequate dental care, domestic violence victim advocacy and more.

In 1996, Adams was honored by Womble Carlyle with the firm's first Irving Carlyle Pro Bono Publico Award. Last summer, the North Carolina Bar Association named Adams the 2007 recipient of the William L. Thorp Award, the Association's top pro bono honor for individual attorneys.

For the past two-and-a-half years, Tripp Greason has served as the firm's full-time Pro Bono Director. In this role, he is responsible for the creation, implementation, and management of the firm's pro bono activities; developing pro bono opportunities for the firm's attorneys, as well as for monitoring the quality, quantity and diversity of the firm's pro bono activities.

Greason organized and executed the firm's Hurricane Katrina and When Duty Calls pro bono projects. During the Katrina project, teams of Womble Carlyle lawyers and paralegals spent the summer of 2006 in New Orleans to begin assisting certain low-income residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the storm to prove ownership in their homes ("successions"). In all, more than 30 attorneys and staff members traveled to New Orleans, while many others provided support from Womble Carlyle's offices. When Duty Calls is an ongoing pro bono initiative that helps military veterans receive the service-connected disability benefits to which they are entitled. So far, clinics for veterans have been held in the cities of three Womble Carlyle offices, with more scheduled for 2008.

The number of Womble Carlyle attorney hours devote to providing pro bono legal assistance has nearly doubled during Greason's tenure as Pro Bono Director. Also, the firm has received numerous national and state awards for its pro bono work during that time.

Yonuschot, an attorney in the firm's Product Liability Litigation Practice Group, also helped lead the Hurricane Katrina pro bono efforts and spent two weeks on the ground in New Orleans working one-on-one with affected homeowners.

After she returned home, she has spent more than 400 hours completing succession transactions for more than 100 New Orleans home owners.

She also has acted on behalf of North Carolina's abused and neglected children as a guardian ad litem appellate advocate, worked to return an abducted child to her father in Ecuador for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and assisted the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless in advocating for the education rights of homeless children in the last two years.

The awards were presented at The Power of Justice Luncheon, hosted by Business Leader Media and the North Carolina Bar Association and held at the Empire Room in downtown Greensboro. North Carolina Bar Association President Janet Ward Black was the keynote speaker for the event.

Click here for more information on Womble Carlyle's Pro Bono Program.