GREENSBORO, N.C. – Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP has awarded their 2010 scholarship to Jonathan Peterson, a rising second-year law student from Elizabethtown, North Carolina. The scholarship is designed to promote law school opportunities for outstanding minority students and to encourage minority graduates to practice in North Carolina and surrounding states in the Southeast.
Peterson, a law student at the College of William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Va., will be awarded $5,000 per year for his remaining two years of school. He has also been granted a paid summer associate position at Smith Moore Leatherwood‘s Greensboro office. Peterson received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and plans to practice law in North Carolina.
According to Smith Moore Leatherwood attorney Timothy Peck, the scholarship program has given assistance to 29 recipients, totaling more than $300,000 since its inception in 1998. Scholarship recipients are not required to work for Smith Moore Leatherwood after their second year of school or after graduation, although the firm may extend return employment offers.
"Smith Moore Leatherwood was a pioneer in the creation of minority scholarship programs in the Carolinas," said Rob Marcus, chairman of the firm's management committee. "We are proud of the accomplishments of our recipients and the firm's ability to assist minority students in their advancement of a legal education."
Past scholarship recipients have earned law degrees from Duke, Harvard, Howard, UNC- Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central, Stanford, University of Texas, University of Virginia and Wake Forest.
Media Contact:
Mary Leigh Wallace
336-553-1802