Law Dean Reappointed in Wake of Advances in Applicants, Bar Exam Results, Rankings

Posted on March 10, 2021

Martin H. Brinkley ’92 (JD) has been appointed to another five-year term as dean of UNC’s School of Law.

Under Brinkley’s leadership, the school has increased applications and improved the overall quality of applicants. The University reported that first-time bar passage among UNC law graduates is at the highest rates of all North Carolina law schools and that student job placement rates are above 90 percent.

The school made a 21-place improvement from 2018 to the most recent U.S. News & World Report rankings. It now ranks 24th among all schools.

Also under Brinkley’s leadership, the school:

• Launched the UNC Law Institute for Innovation, a three-clinic center providing experiential education for 48 law students per year that makes startup/small-business, intellectual property and social enterprise legal services available to entrepreneurs at UNC, N.C. State University, other branches of the UNC System and at rural economic incubators. The institute was founded with support from the William Rand Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust and a recurring appropriation from the N.C. General Assembly.

• Created a military and veterans law clinic.

• Helped to launch the UNC Critical Race Lawyering Civil Rights Clinic, the first of its kind in the country, under the leadership of Erika Wilson, the Thomas W. Lambeth Distinguished Professor of public policy.

• Hired 16 new tenure-track, tenured lateral and long-term contract faculty members, including a significant increase in the number of faculty who contribute to diversity.

• Increased alumni and donor engagement. The law school has raised 75 percent of its fundraising goal of $75 million toward For All Kind: The Campaign for Carolina, with two years to go in the campaign.

Brinkley, the Arch T. Allen Distinguished Professor of law, came to the deanship in July 2015 directly from practice, the first person to do so in the modern history of the law school, which was founded in 1845. Before becoming dean, Brinkley was a law clerk to Chief Judge Sam J. Ervin III of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced law for 22 years.

Brinkley is a past president of the 17,000-member N.C. Bar Association (2011-12) and an elected member of the American Law Institute, considered the leading independent organization in the U.S. producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize and improve the law.

In 2017, Brinkley received the N.C. Bar Association’s H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award, recognizing an “attorney who through his/her accomplishments and multifaceted life, serves as an example by inspiring others to renew their commitments to professionalism, integrity, intellectual achievement, civility, and service in the practice of law; an attorney who possesses personal integrity; an attorney who pursues excellence in legal work, and respects judicial officers, other lawyers, and members of the public; and an attorney who provides pro bono services to those in need of such services.”

---