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Not in a position to stand up for your beliefs? Unable for reasons beyond your control to speak truth to power? Lack the immediate ability to effect change? You almost certainly have an ally in Ashley Joines.

Joines’s record of advocacy and service to those around her dates to high school where she led a community service club that established a clothing closet for classmates in need. In college at Clemson University, she mentored freshmen as a resident assistant, and she spent years on a marine conservation research team that taught children about protecting their environment.

It was natural for the South Carolina native to find service and leadership opportunities at ���ϲ����� Law as co-director of the ���ϲ����� Law Mentors and editor-in-chief of the ���ϲ����� Law Review, among other activities.

So if you’re looking for an advocate, a leader, or simply a friend in whom to confide, you’ll be pressed to find someone as accessible as Joines, a new graduate of ���ϲ����� School of Law and recipient of its David Gergen Award for Leadership & Professionalism bestowed at Commencement for the Class of 2024.

“I had no idea!” Joines said of the award announcement on Dec. 13, 2024. “I had my own thoughts as to who might receive it. There are several students in my class who are more than deserving of the award. I heard ‘���ϲ����� Law Review’ and thought, ‘huh, maybe it’s me?’ Then I heard ‘editor-in-chief.’

“I made eye contact with Dean Zak Kramer, who started to grin, and I realized people had been sneaky!”

In announcing the selection, Assistant Professor Rosa Newman-Ruffin described Joines as “a kind and empathetic listener” who “treats everyone with kindness and respect” and carries herself with “professionalism and humility.”

���ϲ����� Law students are nominated for the award by their peers, professors, or staff. Honorees are chosen by a faculty and staff committee based on law school activities that represent the twin principles of leadership and professionalism.

The award is named in honor of David Gergen, a former adviser to four United States presidents and founding director of the Center for Public Leadership and at the Harvard Kennedy School. Gergen served as one of the country’s preeminent political commentators and recently concluded his tenure as the inaugural chair of ���ϲ����� Law’s Board of Advisors.

“Her many nominators see her as a model for once and future lawyers,” Newman-Ruffin said. “As one put it, ‘She is the exact type of lawyer people should seek, and I hope to be as amazing as she is.’”

“Her many nominators see her as a model for once and future lawyers. As one put it, ‘She is the exact type of lawyer people should seek, and I hope to be as amazing as she is.’”

– Assistant Professor Rosa Newman-Ruffin

In addition to her involvement with the ���ϲ����� Law Review and the ���ϲ����� Law Mentors program, Joines served on the Moot Court Board and as a teaching assistant in Torts. Award nominators had taken note. Excerpts from multiple nominations include:

• “Ashley cares about other people. She is constantly praising and giving credit . . . to other students for their achievements. She likes to direct attention to and celebrate her colleagues.”
• She is “the kind of person who will drop everything to help someone else. She is constantly building others up through words of affirmation, providing resources, or making networking connections.”
• “She always puts others first and does everything in her power to help all those around her.”
• “If ���ϲ����� were a person, it would be Ashley Joines.”

While Joines sits for the North Carolina Bar Exam in February, she has already started work as a judicial law clerk for , a jurist for whom she has twice interned since March 2024.

Her professional experiences as a law student don’t end there. Joines also completed:

• A residency-in-practice the Hon. Joi Elizabeth Peake of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina
• A summer associate position with the Atlanta-based law firm of which has offices across the United States
• A summer law clerk opportunity with the

What does leadership mean to Joines, a fan of true-crime TV, historical fiction and dystopian novels, and Clemson Tigers football? It’s how you show others they can succeed. It’s how you teach others not to self-eliminate themselves from opportunities they may wish to pursue. It’s also how you model those same practices to everyone around you.

And mentoring is key to leadership, she adds.

“While I want to pursue a career in litigation, I hope to continue mentoring students,” Joines said. “There is something very beneficial when alumni and working professionals mentor law students. I also wouldn’t be surprised if I end up teaching one day, should I have the opportunity — being a professor, in my opinion, would be a great way for me to combine my interests in mentoring students and legal scholarship.”

About ���ϲ����� School of Law

���ϲ����� Law is the preeminent school for engaged and experiential learning in law. With a focus on learning by doing, it integrates traditional classroom instruction with a required, full-time residency-in-practice field placement for all full-time students during the winter or spring of their second year. The law school’s distinctive full-time curriculum in Greensboro offers a logically sequenced program of professional preparation and is accomplished in 2.5 years, which provides exceptional value by lowering tuition and permitting graduates early entry into their careers.

���ϲ����� Law has graduated more than 1,700 alumni since opening its doors in 2006. Its annual enrollment now tops 470 students and the law school is regularly featured in PreLaw Magazine’s “Best Schools for Practical Training” rankings, reaching No. 4 in the nation in 2024. ���ϲ����� Law was also among those schools highlighted in 2023 by Bloomberg Law for its innovative approach to student development.

The ���ϲ����� Law Flex Program, an in-person, part-time law program for working professionals launched in Fall 2024 in Charlotte’s South End neighborhood.