Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP recently recognized two attorneys from the firm’s Greenville office with the Claude M. Scarborough Pro Bono Award for their outstanding commitment and contributions to pro bono work. This year’s honorees from the firm’s Greenville office were Neil Grayson and Brad Rustin. The award is named for the late Chair Emeritus Claude Scarborough, who made pro bono an integral part of the firm culture during his years as managing partner.
Rustin and Grayson were recognized for their innovative, collaborative, standard-setting, and community-focused work.
Grayson’s pro bono work is focused on helping organizations to increase access to services and capital for low-income communities, including through the formation of social impact investment funds and other innovative investment structures. Among his pro bono clients are Abundance Capital, a non-profit, Venture Philanthropy platform that helps charitable donors make impact investments in their communities, generating inclusive prosperity and creating sustainable local economies, and the Greenville Housing Impact Fund, a blind pool fund used for affordable housing investments.
Among other things including guardianship and drafting wills, Rustin is known and recognized for the role he has played in leveraging income share agreements. Two examples of this are for the Student Freedom Initiative and the San Diego Workforce in Partnership with UC-San Diego. He was also involved with the Student Freedom Initiative, an organization founded and funded by billionaire Robert Smith, where he helped structure a groundbreaking income sharing agreement to assist students wanting to pursue education at HBCUs. He also assisted the San Diego Workforce Partnership in a pro bono capacity and was integral to the firm being honored as a National Legal Aid & Defender Association’s 2022 Beacon of Justice.
Grayson and Rustin have worked together on many initiatives — Rustin provided legal services to support California’s Community Development Corp., led by the city’s former mayor and this initiative led to a disbursement of $1 million in community aid to over 2,000 individuals. Rustin has also been recognized by the Financial Times as one of the United State’s "Innovative Lawyers," under the "Creating a New Standard Category."
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