S. Luke Largess, Attorney

Luke Largess joined the law firm in 2009, after 18 years as a partner at Ferguson Stein Chambers.  One of eight children in a Navy family, Luke earned a B.A. cum laude from Duke University in 1979 and worked as a teacher, social worker and carpenter before entering law school at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he graduated in 1990.  While at UNC, Luke was inducted into the Davis Honor Society and the University's Order of the Golden Fleece, received the Student Pro Bono Award from the North Carolina State Bar for helping start the North Carolina Legal Education Assistance Foundation (NC LEAF), the nation's first state-wide, loan-forgiveness program to assist lawyers engaged in public service with servicing school debt, and served as an observer at the 1990 elections in Nicaragua.

Luke's practice has included trial and appellate work in state and federal courts in education, employment, civil rights, criminal defense, personal injury and medical negligence.  He represented the class of black families in the 1999 trial and later appeals in the historic Charlotte school desegregation case, originally known as Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ, and later as Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education.  He more recently has won large jury verdicts for Title VII retaliation (Brown v. Hillcrest Foods, Western District of North Carolina, 2005) and defamation (Roquemore v. Shepherd Electric, Mecklenburg County, 2003) and has had significant confidential settlements in police misconduct and medical malpractice cases.  Luke has represented school teachers since 1990 for the North Carolina Association of Educators.  For over four years, Luke represented a public school teacher falsely accused of taking indecent liberties with his students in Cabarrus County.  Luke defended the teacher administratively before the school board and in criminal court, saving his client's job as an educator, and secured a dismissal at the close of the evidence in the first of several planned criminal trial that resulted in the dismissal of the eight remaining felony charges.

Luke is married to journalist Elizabeth Leland and they have two children, Jack and Abbie.  Luke is a member of the Mecklenburg County Bar Association, the North Carolina Advocates for Justice, the North Carolina Bar Association, and the North Carolina State Bar, and has served on the board and legal committee of the ACLU of North Carolina and the N.C. Justice Center.  He also remains involved as board president of NCLEAF, which today provides over $750,000 in assistance annually to public service lawyers. www.ncleaf.org