2021 Legal Legends of Color: Professor James E. Coleman Jr.
Receiving the Legal Legends of Color Award from the NCBA Minorities in the Profession Committee at the 2021 NCBA Annual Meeting carries special meaning for Professor James E. Coleman Jr., whose remarkable career has come full circle – from North Carolina to Ivy League schools and major American cities back to North Carolina.
“It is an extraordinary honor,” said Coleman, who serves as the John S. Bradway Professor of the Practice of Law, Director of the Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility, and Co-Director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at the Duke University School of Law, where he has worked since 1996.
“One of the things that made it especially meaningful is that Julius Chambers has also been inducted into the Legal Legends of Color. When I was in high school in Charlotte my senior year, which was also the year he opened his office in Charlotte, I worked with him as an office boy. And he was my mentor later and that relationship lasted until he died. To be in the same group with Julius Chambers was especially special.”
Coleman left North Carolina to earn degrees from Harvard University (A.B. 1970) and Columbia Law School (J.D. 1974). His good fortune continued, Coleman recalled, when he began his legal career as a law clerk.
“I have been very lucky to have a number of mentors,” Coleman said, “beginning with Julius Chambers but including Judge Damon Keith. He was a federal District Court judge (Eastern District of Michigan) in Detroit when I clerked for him; he finished his career on the Court of Appeals (Sixth Circuit).
“I was his law clerk, and he was also a person who certainly would have been considered a legal legend of color. Keith had an extraordinary impact on the law and on his law clerks.”
Coleman’s career included 15 years in private practice, concluding with 12 years as a partner with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C. He also served as assistant general counsel for the Legal Services Corporation, chief counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, and as deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department of Education.
“I worked closely with John Pickering in D.C. and Fred Livingston in NYC, who were white. Both were important mentors who instilled in me the values that inform how I practice law and conduct myself as a lawyer. I am very lucky to have been mentored in the law from high school right through today.”
Coleman, in turn, has endeavored to set a similar example for law students and young lawyers.
“I have felt that I had an obligation as a lawyer to be a role model, not just for lawyers of color but for young lawyers generally,” Coleman said. “One of the reasons I enjoy teaching is to model good lawyering, professional responsibility and so forth.
“I once had a conversation with a University of Michigan law student who told me he thought I was a hero for the role that I played in the Duke lacrosse case, and he hoped he would step up like I did when he becomes a lawyer. I told him that I didn’t think I was a hero at all. I just did what I thought was right. When you do that, you don’t have to think about it when you are confronted by a situation that requires courage. That is how I have tried to conduct my career.”
In addition to chairing the Lacrosse ad hoc Review Committee and the Duke Athletic Council, Coleman has served as chair of the ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities and the ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project. He received the Raeder-Taslitz Award from the ABA Criminal Justice Section in 2015.
Regarding this most recent honor, Coleman commented on the important work of the Minorities in the Profession Committee and its former co-chair, Jasmine McGhee, who has also chaired the Legal Legends of Color Subcommittee and coordinated the awards ceremony.
“Jasmine McGhee worked as an associate at the Washington D.C. law firm in which I was a partner,” Coleman said. “I think the work of her committees is among the most important work that the Bar Association does. I told Jasmine that I was deeply touched that the committee thought enough of me to nominate me for this special honor.
“Because I spent a great deal of my career in Washington, D.C., before I began teaching, I am especially proud to receive this recognition in North Carolina where I was born and grew up. That makes it even more special. I am in very good company among the extraordinary people who have been honored in this way.”
Russell Rawlings is director of external affairs and communications for the North Carolina Bar Association.