News Post

Montgomery, Ala., July 19, 2013 – Huntsville lawyer Richard J.R. Raleigh, Jr., managing shareholder of the law firm of Wilmer & Lee, P.A., has been nominated to become president-elect of the Alabama State Bar.  He will assume the presidency in July 2014, after serving one year as president-elect.

Raleigh has held a number of leadership positions within the state bar.  In addition to representing the 23rd Judicial Circuit for nine years as a member of the Board of Bar Commissioners, the bar’s policy and decision-making body, he served on the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education Commission, and he helped to protect the public from lawyers found to have violated the Rules of Professional Conduct while a member of one of the bar’s disciplinary panels.  Raleigh has served on the executive committees of two past ASB presidents, and he is a Fellow of the Alabama Bar Foundation.  He is admitted to practice before various state and federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court.

In his practice, he represents businesses and individuals in corporate, commercial, intellectual property, labor and employment, and government contract litigation matters in state and federal courts throughout the Southeast.

Before joining Wilmer & Lee, he was an attorney in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, stationed at various times in Germany, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where he advised clients and high-ranking military officers on legal issues.  Among other positions Raleigh held while in the Army, he served as trial counsel and trial defense counsel, trying cases in military courts martial.

He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama (1992) and earned his law degree cum laude from the University of Alabama School of Law (1995).

While in law school, he was a Hugo L. Black Scholar, a member of the editorial board of the Alabama Law Review, and was selected to the Bench and Bar Legal Honor Society.

Raleigh has devoted countless hours to providing pro bono representation to the poor and disadvantaged, personally handling civil cases on a pro bono basis for the Volunteer Lawyers Program; he also served as President of the Board of Directors of the Madison County Volunteer Lawyers Program, a program he helped revitalize beginning in 2009.

In 2010, the state bar recognized his pro bono service with the President’s Award, given for exemplary service to the profession. That same year, Super Lawyers named him a “Rising Star,” one of the top young lawyers in Alabama. Only 2.5 percent of the lawyers in the state can hold this designation.  Since that time, he has continued to be listed in Alabama’s Super Lawyers and the Best Lawyers peer-review publication.  He is rated AV-Preeminent in the Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings, the highest rating for professional excellence.

As an active member of the Huntsville community, Raleigh has devoted his time to serve in various leadership capacities for charitable and civic groups as either board member or officer of the following organizations: National Children’s Advocacy Center (president); The Downtown Forty-Seven (president, 2010-11); and The Arts Council, Inc.  He is also a member of the Downtown Huntsville Rotary Club.

Raleigh will become the fourth lawyer from Huntsville to serve as state bar president, including S. Dagnal Rowe (1997-98); Gary C. Huckaby (1988-89) and Patrick W. Richardson (1969-70).

The 17,300-member Alabama State Bar is dedicated to promoting the professional responsibility, competence and satisfaction of its members, improving the administration of justice and increasing public understanding and respect for the law.