Willis Smith - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Born in Norfolk Virginia, he moved to North Carolina before age 2. After graduating from Trinity College (now the undergraduate liberal arts college of Duke University) in 1910 and Duke University Law School in 1912, he became a practicing attorney—but interrupted his work to serve in the United States Army during World War I. In 1912, he founded the law firm that as of 2008 is known as Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan.

Each year, Duke University Law School awards the "Willis Smith Award" to the graduating law student with the highest academic average in the class.

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