ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Edward W. Mullins Jr. has been selected to receive the prestigious 2022 American Inns of Court A. Sherman Christensen Award, which recognizes those who have provided exceptional leadership to the American Inns of Court movement. Mullins, a retired lawyer and former member of the American Inns of Court Board of Trustees, will receive the award at the 2022 American Inns of Court Celebration of Excellence at the Supreme Court of the United States October 29.
“Ed Mullins sets the standard for professionalism, legal excellence, civility, ethics, and exemplary conduct as an attorney, to which we should all hold ourselves,” writes Richard H. Levenstein, Esquire, of Nason, Yeager, Gerson, Harris & Fumero PA, who nominated Mullins for the award.
After graduating cum laude from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1959, Mullins became the fifth lawyer at the Columbia, South Carolina, law firm Nelson Mullins & Grier, where his father was a partner. He became a partner himself in 1962 and retired in 2018. Today the firm has grown to 930 attorneys and other professionals in 30 offices in 11 states and Washington, DC. Mullins headed the firm’s extensive litigation practice and while serving as the firm’s chair, led an initiative to raise $1 million to establish the Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough Center for Professionalism at the University of South Carolina School of Law.
Elected to the American Inns of Court Board of Trustees, Mullins worked with the Nelson Mullins Center to establish a model mentoring program and produce a white paper on civility that was then adopted by the American Inns of Court and several national trial lawyer associations. While on the board and thereafter as part of the Leadership Council, Mullins helped form half a dozen inns of court in South Carolina and has started working with others to form another new Inn. Mullins has long been an active member of the John Belton O’Neall American Inn of Court and received the Inn’s Rhodes McDonald Award in 2012 in honor of his status as a model of the conduct and values the inn strives to uphold. He has held leadership positions in many other legal organizations, including the South Carolina Defense Trial Lawyers Association, Defense Research and Trial Lawyers Association, Lawyers for Civil Justice, the American College of Trial Lawyers, the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel, and the Product Liability Advisory Council.
The American Inns of Court, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, inspires the legal community to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education, and mentoring. The organization’s membership includes nearly 30,000 federal, state, and local judges; lawyers; law professors; and law students in nearly 370 chapters nationwide. More information is available at www.innsofcourt.org.
