Welcome to Tharrington Smith

We serve as a partner to education. Our lawyers have the knowledge and experience to provide the best counsel possible. Let us help you to protect this essential resource in our state.

Education Law

Tharrington Smith has been an partner to education in North Carolina for more than 30 years.  Since 1978, we have served as general counsel to the Wake County Board of Education and the North Carolina School Boards Association and have assisted more than 100 school systems across the state with their legal needs. We are also general counsel for the school boards of the Alamance-Burlington Schools, Brunswick, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, Durham Public Schools, Weldon City Schools, and Bertie, Chatham, Cleveland, Currituck, Edgecombe, Jones, Lenoir, Northampton, Moore, Person, and Tyrrell counties. We also work jointly with local attorneys for the Beaufort, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Johnston, and Rowan-Salisbury boards and are counsel to several private and charter schools, including Duke School and Trinity School in Durham. In addition, our education attorneys have represented several community colleges in various litigation matters. We provide a wide range of legal support involving personnel and student discipline issues, contracts, policy manual revisions, teacher dismissals, funding disputes, special education matters, school closings, construction, and everything in between. We represent our clients in state, federal, and administrative courts, and in complaints before the Office for Civil Rights, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. Our attorneys, many of whom have been educators or have educators in their families, have a passion for representing the educational institutions and educators of our state.