RALEIGH, N.C. — Poyner Spruill attorney E. Fitzgerald “Jerry” Parnell has been elected to the American Bar Association’s 40-member Board of Governors. Parnell serves on the board’s finance and audit committees and is the Board’s liaison to the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, the Standing Committee on Professionalism , and the Coordinating Council of the Center for Professional Responsibility. He has served in the ABA House of Delegates for the past 11 years.
The Board of Governors oversees the general operation of the 400,000-member ABA.
Parnell, based in Poyner Spruill’s Charlotte office, has devoted significant time to professional leadership. He is a past president of the North Carolina State Bar, a recipient of the Chief Justice’s Professionalism Award, and a Sustaining Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, which he also serves as state chairman. Parnell is a founding member of the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission, and was a founder of the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, Federal Defenders of Western North Carolina Inc., and the North Carolina Federal Bar Advisory Council, which he also chaired. He served multi-year terms on the ABA’s Standing Committees on the Federal Judiciary and Ethics and on Professional Responsibility. He currently serves as an IOLTA trustee, and as a board member of the UNC Law Alumni Association.
“Jerry’s election to the ABA Board of Governors reflects his many years of service to the legal profession and the respect he has earned from lawyers across the country,” Managing Partner Joseph B. Dempster Jr. said.
