Fred Harwell is the firm’s managing shareholder. He has been a member of the New York Bar since 1973 and of the North Carolina Bar since 1980. He is admitted to practice before all federal and state courts in North Carolina, as well as the Fourth Circuit United States Court of Appeals and the United States Tax Court. He has practiced law in Winston-Salem as a principal of Davis & Harwell for more than twenty-five years.

For several years Mr. Harwell served as the Executive Director of the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research in Raleigh. Before attending law school, he was a reporter and columnist with the Raleigh Times, the Raleigh News  Observer, the Durham Herald, and United Press International. He is the author of A True Deliverance: The Joan Little Case, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., which won an Edgar Allan Poe Award as the best non-fiction crime book of 1980.

Mr. Harwell graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1966 and from the University of North Carolina Law School in 1972. He was on active duty as a commissioned officer in the United States Navy from 1966 to 1969 and was communications officer aboard U.S.S. Hull, DD-945, during that ship’s Vietnam deployment in 1967-68. He practiced law in New York City for several years.

Mr. Harwell has been active various professional organizations including the North Carolina Bar Association, the New York Bar Association, the Bar Association of the City of New York, the American Bar Association, the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He has served on various committees of the North Carolina State Bar, the North Carolina State Bar Association, and The North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers. He has been named in Best Lawyers in America in the field of commercial litigation.

Mr. Harwell currently manages the firm’s business affairs. He continues to handle business, tax, and litigation matters on a limited basis for existing and former clients as well as new matters referred by other attorneys. For the past twenty years his practice emphasized litigation in state and federal courts; the defense of business and white-collar crimes; and business, contract, and corporate law.