On Thursday, June 18, local attorney Sheila M Lambert was inducted into the North Carolina Bar Association General Practice Hall of Fame, making her the first WNC woman to achieve that title, according to her news release.
The distinction recognizes “a lifetime of exemplary service and high ethical and professional standards as a general practitioner and service as a role model for all lawyers in North Carolina,” according to the same release.
Here is the full press release from Lambert:
Asheville attorney Sheila M. Lambert was inducted into the North Carolina Bar Association General Practice Hall of Fame Thursday, June 18, 2015, at ceremonies at the Renaissance Asheville Hotel held in conjunction with the NCBA’s annual meeting.
The Hall of Fame recognizes a lifetime of exemplary service and high ethical and professional standards as a general practitioner and service as a role model for all lawyers in North Carolina.
Since the Hall of Fame was established in 1989, only 149 of the approximately 18,000 attorneys in the NCBA have been inducted.
Lambert is the first woman in Asheville or Western North Carolina to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
“I believe that my induction honors not only me but all women attorneys across the state who, not so long ago, had to struggle to be treated as equals, to get into the big, prestigious law firms, to become partners or judges or even just to get their voices heard in a meeting,” said Lambert.
A 1982 magna cum laude graduate of Tulane School of Law in New Orleans, Lambert has practiced with the Law Offices of Sheila M. Lambert in Asheville since 1988. Before that, she was with the firm of Stone, Pigman, Walther, Wittman & Hutchinson in New Orleans. Lambert was managing editor of the Tulane Law Review. She received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Western Carolina University.
Also inducted at the NCBA 2015 meeting were attorneys John H. Vernon III of Burlington and Richard M. Wiggins of Fayetteville.
The 10 previous inductees from Asheville since 1989 are Max O. Cogburn, Harold K. Bennett, Roy W. Davis Jr., Herbert L. Hyde, Landon B. Roberts, J. William Russell, John S. “Jack” Stevens, O. E. Starnes Jr., J. Harold Seagle and James M. Baley Jr. Inductees from other areas of Western North Carolina include Boyd B. Massagee Jr., Garret Dixon Bailey, Charles E. Burgin, Orville D. Coward Sr., Everette C. Carnes, E. P. “Sandy” Dameron, Frank H. Watson, Robert B. Byrd, Richard S. Jones and James M. Kimzey.
In 2011, Lambert received the NCBA and 28th Judicial District Bar Centennial Award for Outstanding and Exemplary Community Service. She also received the 28th Judicial District Bar and Pisgah Legal Services Outstanding Service Award in 2009.
Lambert and her husband, Larry Lan Sluder, a writer, live in Enka-Candler and have two children, Brooks Lambert-Sluder, assistant director of Advising Programs at Harvard College, and Rose Lambert-Sluder, a graduate student and graduate teaching fellow at the University of Oregon.
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