Will Packard Named 2009 Mecklenburg County Bar Pro Bono Attorney of the Year

Will Packard, a real estate attorney with Robinson Bradshaw in Charlotte, has been named the 2009 Mecklenburg County Bar Pro Bono Attorney of the Year.

Packard is being honored for the time and energy he has contributed to a number of nonprofit agencies that serve children throughout the Charlotte area. He will be presented with the award at the Mecklenburg County Bar’s Annual Meeting on May 21.

“It is incredibly rewarding to work with the local agencies and organizations whose mission is to serve the children of our community,” Packard said. “But the caring staff of these agencies who devote themselves to serving their clients all day, every day are the real heroes.”

“I am proud of Robinson Bradshaw’s philosophy of fostering and encouraging its attorneys to become engaged and help these organizations make our community a better place to live,” he said.

Packard serves as president of the board of directors for A Child’s Place, a nonprofit group that works to eliminate the impact of homelessness on children in the Charlotte area. Packard worked with A Child’s Place to help organize and document collaborative agreements between multiple service organizations to transform Hall House, a once-vacant 12-story building owned by the Charlotte Housing Authority, into a temporary shelter for homeless families. He also is on the board of directors for the Children and Family Services Center, a nonprofit organization that owns and operates a multi-tenant office building in downtown Charlotte that houses nine area nonprofit agencies. In such capacity, Packard helped draft agreements that established the framework for a new affiliate of Children and Family Services Center to provide back-office services to several of the nonprofit agencies in the building. Additionally, he represented Thompson Child & Family Focus in its acquisition of land in West Charlotte for the development of a new child development center.

“Although we received many great nominations this year for the Mecklenburg County Bar Volunteer Lawyer Program’s Pro Bono Award for Outstanding Individual Attorney, Mr. Packard’s was particularly impressive due to the diversity in his pro bono work and the universal appreciation from the organizations with which he works,” said Mary Jordan Mullinax, volunteer lawyer program coordinator for the Mecklenburg County Bar. “Many of these organizations submitted their own letters of nomination for Mr. Packard, which really exemplified the impact he was making through his pro bono work in the Mecklenburg County community.”