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Frank Goldsmith was born in Asheville and grew up
in Marion, North Carolina. He graduated from Davidson College in
1967, studied international law and French constitutional law at
the Université de Montpellier, France, and received his Juris
Doctor degree with honors in 1970 from the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif (a
legal academic honorary society), served as Associate Editor of
the North Carolina Law Review, and received the Van Hecke-Wettach
Citizenship Award and the Student Bar Association Certificate of
Service. Mr. Goldsmith received a commission as an Infantry lieutenant
in 1967 and served on active duty as a captain in the U.S. Army
Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Following his honorable discharge
from the Army in 1972, he practiced law with a firm in Durham, North
Carolina, then returned to his home town of Marion, where he has
practiced ever since. Mr. Goldsmith and his brother and law partner,
Jim Goldsmith, formed their own firm, Goldsmith & Goldsmith,
in 1979. In 1990, the brothers were joined by Julie Dews, and 1996,
the firm changed its name to Goldsmith, Goldsmith & Dews, P.A.
Mr. Goldsmith’s practice is focused on mediation and other
forms of alternate dispute resolution. Since 1996 he has been certified
as a mediator by the North Carolina Dispute Resolution Commission,
and he regularly mediates cases in the state and federal courts,
as well as serving as an arbitrator. Mr. Goldsmith also finds time
for pro bono work, including representing inmates on North Carolina’s
Death Row and detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. His prior
litigation practice involved mainly employment law, commercial and
land litigation, personal injury litigation, and constitutional
and civil rights law. He has litigated cases at all levels of the
state and federal court system, including the United States Supreme
Court, where he argued and won a case for a prisoner as court-assigned
counsel in 1977.
In addition to his law practice, Mr. Goldsmith has taught trial
advocacy as a Senior Lecturing Fellow (adjunct professor) at Duke
University Law School and as a faculty member at various legal institutes
and programs, both in North Carolina and other states, sponsored
by the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA), the North Carolina
Advocates for Justice (NCAJ), and other organizations. He is a graduate
of NITA’s Advanced Course and its Harvard Teacher Training
Program. Mr. Goldsmith has also lectured in a number of continuing
legal education programs for lawyers in the fields of civil rights,
general civil litigation, criminal defense, and habeas corpus litigation.
In 1994, Mr. Goldsmith was inducted as a Fellow of the American
College of Trial Lawyers at its meeting in Ottawa, Canada. He has
also served on the Boards of Governors of both the North Carolina
Bar Association (NCBA) and the NCAJ, has served as Chair of the
Labor and Employment Law Section of the NCBA and the Employment
Law Section of the NCAJ, as well as serving on or chairing various
committees and task forces of both organizations. He served two
terms as Vice-President for Legal Affairs of the NCAJ and served
two terms as a member of the Board of Trustees of the University
of North Carolina Law Alumni Association. He has served as president
of the Twenty-Ninth Judicial District and the McDowell County Bar
Associations and on the boards of Catawba Valley Legal Services,
North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, and the American Civil Liberties
Union of North Carolina (which he served both as president and later
as chair of its Legal Committee). In 1987, the ACLU-NC honored Mr.
Goldsmith with its Frank Porter Graham Award. Mr. Goldsmith was
one of five North Carolina attorneys profiled in a 1999 series of
articles in The North Carolina State Bar Journal entitled “Searching
for Atticus Finch.”
Mr. Goldsmith’s outside interests include hiking (he is a
section maintainer for the Appalachian Trail, and in the fall of
2013 he hiked from France across Spain on the Camino de Santiago
(the Camino Francés), reaching the Atlantic coast of Spain),
travel, the study of languages, and keeping up with his grandchildren.
He is also active in various civic and public interest organizations
and in his religious congregation, Congregation Beth Israel in Asheville,
North Carolina.
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