About Stephanie Hunt
Stephanie Hunt is a writer/editor based in Charleston, SC, with more than 25 years experience writing features, profiles and essays for numerous publications. In addition to being a regular contributor to Super Lawyer, she is Editor at Large for Charleston Magazine, and writes regularly for Veranda, Southern Living, Coastal Living, Faith & Leadership (Duke University), LUXE, and is a stringer for the Washington Post. An avid cyclist and conservationist, she is a graduate of Duke University and Vanderbilt Divinity School, and the mother of three girls.
Articles written by Stephanie Hunt
On Their Own
Four attorneys on how they blazed their solo pathsYou won’t find the route to solo practice on Google Maps or Waze. There’s no definitive path, no way to skirt the potholes or roadside hazards, and everyone’s journey is different. Lawyers are humans, after all, with distinctive motivations, family circumstances, GPAs, and levels patience and cold tolerance. Some may want to bring their anxiety-prone dogs to work; others have had it with missing kids’ soccer games for billable hours; others simply like calling their own shots. Each solo …
In Their Corner
With an expanding civil rights case load, Alex Heroy embraces litigation as a change agent“Have you ever heard the term ‘babysitter?’” the resource officer asked the 7-year-old boy with autism, who, after recent medication changes, was agitated and spitting in response to stress. The officer already had handcuffed the 80-pound child, pinned him to the ground, and had his knee on the boy’s back. “I take that term literally, my friend,” he said, as reported in The Washington Post. When the boy’s mother recounted her son’s experience to Alex Heroy, an attorney with …
Taking Them Head On
From Goliath companies to establishment politicians, Marguerite Willis comes ready for battle“You look familiar,” a woman told Marguerite Willis as the two were buckling their seatbelts in the same airplane aisle. For Willis, a former gubernatorial candidate whose image once graced billboards and ads across South Carolina, it wasn’t an unusual comment. She added, “Do you by chance teach at the University of South Carolina?” Willis replied that she did not but does lecture there occasionally. “Did you come and talk about women and money?” Willis …
The Muck Raker for Muckrakers
When journalism or IP require getting your hands dirty, Wallace Lightsey digs inDiscovery commonly requires a lot of digging, but Wallace Lightsey does it with uncommon ferocity. Evidentiary digging with a backhoe and bulldozer may not be a standard legal maneuver, but it was par for the course (or, in this case, town dump) when Lightsey set about unearthing documents in a seminal First Amendment case in the early ’90s. The Greenville litigator was representing journalist Chris Weston and The Greenville News, after they reported on allegations of inappropriate use of …
'Being Underestimated is Fabulous'
Six attorneys recount the then-and-now of women in the lawThe six attorneys interviewed on the following pages know what it’s like to be the only woman in the room. They blazed their trails in the ’70s. Four were the first woman hired by their firms, Susan M. Smythe was the first woman in Charleston to make partner and Alice Paylor was the fourth female president of the South Carolina Bar Association. Though their experiences differ, each agrees on one thing: Women, thankfully, are fully ingrained in the legal profession now. Entering Law: …
Home Fires
HOA rep Julie McGhee Howard tries to make sure everyone just gets alongWhen “Pumpkin Man,” a bottoms-up scarecrow, bared too much backside for some of its North Atlanta neighbors last October, residents asked their homeowners association to intervene. Rather than remove it, however, the homeowner simply covered the pumpkin rump with a “Censored by the GBHOA” sign. Atlanta-area news stations, not to mention social media, had a field day. Julie McGhee Howard, managing partner of NowackHoward, an Atlanta-based firm devoted to community association law, …
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
Jack Swerling is less fearsome than his courtroom moniker ‘Mr. Murder’If you find yourself charged with murder or other serious crimes in South Carolina, chances are good you’ll end up knocking on the door of “Mr. Murder.” At 6-foot-4 and 300 pounds, Jack Swerling is an intimidating presence anywhere, but in the courtroom, he’s known to go for the jugular. In cross-examinations, he unleashes his killer intellect and booming oratorical force on behalf of his clients—many of them alleged or admitted murderers. The notorious Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins …
Son of the Sage of the South
The third Gedney M. Howe continues his father’s tradition of amassing successful results for his clientsIn Charleston, the name Gedney M. Howe is legendary two times over. “I ain’t the real Gedney Howe,” Gedney Howe III says with a laugh, paraphrasing what a friend of his father’s once told him. Despite Howe III’s accomplishments in the courtroom, including successful results for his clients in many high-profile cases, one of which remains South Carolina’s largest-ever personal injury verdict, he doesn’t consider the comment an insult. When your name is Gedney Howe, that talk simply …
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