The following Q&A was adapted from Charles Baldwin’s profile in Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite 2015.
Why you chose to specialize in your particular field:
Family, friends and classmates of different nationalities and occupations interested me in international business and cultures. Those experiences, plus a desire to help people, led to law and an international transactional and business practice. Some of the best advice I received was from former Sullivan & Cromwell Managing Partner Jack Stevenson, a family friend. Jack offered to speak with me and we sat on the porch of his mountain cottage, “No Deer” (his wife was an avid gardener). He told me that if I wanted to practice international business law, I should forget about international business law. Instead, he said I should study as hard as I could and focus on bedrock legal principles (contracts, torts, real property, equity, litigation). Then, I should join the best law practice I could. When an international business issue arose, I should let it be known that I was interested and offer to work on it. After law school, I joined an established business and admiralty law practice that I believed would encounter international issues. That led to a diverse business practice, including international transactions including work on international port terminals, technology, pharma, health care, angel and venture capital, transportation and regulatory matters.
Family: Wife, Devon; daughter, Davis; son, Selden; and Kinston Yard Dog
Memorable case: A project to establish a new maritime port terminal. It involved working through the business and legal issues with national and international companies and seeing the project move from paper to implementation. Seeing the ships, cranes, conveyors, trucks and trains moving cargo was most rewarding. Note: Kudos to my childhood time with Lionel trains.
Passions: Reading, writing, guitar, running
If you didn't practice in your current location, where would you live and work? Winston-Salem or Asheville
What would you do if you were not an attorney? Book editor. The editor of a book I co-authored on international litigation and arbitration said she would like to hire me. I would enjoy learning new subjects and structuring and revising works of authorship.
Favorite place: Wilmington, N.C.
Hero: Henry Frye, North Carolina’s first African-American Chief Justice—a great person, author, poet and fellow Brooks Pierce attorney. He loves people, regardless of time or circumstance.
What is your favorite book or one that you are now engrossed in: Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, by Carlo D’Este
Don’t ask me to: Fix a computer problem
