Meet Jonathan Dunlap

Jonathan has experience handling a broad array of appellate matters, including constitutional, land use, medical malpractice, trusts and estates, employment, and defamation issues. He has argued before the Fourth Circuit, the North Carolina Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Jonathan has personal knowledge of how cases are built at the trial level, having spent 20 years as a civil litigator and trying numerous cases to verdict. Throughout his career his colleagues have sought his counsel in cases that require creative solutions to obstinate problems. He is known for his ability to craft intuitive arguments and clarify complex legal issues.

Jonathan is a member of the North Carolina Appellate Rules Committee, a forum where appellate judges, professors, appellate specialists, and other appellate attorneys discuss how the appellate rules are used, where they can fail, and the unanticipated ways they sometimes work. He is on the Executive Committee for the North Carolina Bar Association's Appellate Practice Section and a member of the Land Use section.

Jonathan is the President Elect of the Buncombe County Bar Association and on the North Carolina Bar Association's Appellate Practice Section Council. He is licensed to practice in all of the state and federal courts of North and South Carolina, the courts of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and the Fourth Circuit.

Jonathan is originally from Florence, South Carolina. He is a graduate of Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. At Kenyon College, he double majored in Philosophy and Modern Foreign Languages, studying French and German and graduating with honors on his French senior thesis. He received his J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 2006, where he served as the Chief Justice of the Moot Court Bar and received the Robert T. Bockman Award for Appellate Advocacy.

Jonathan lived in Rennes, France, for his senior year of high school and in Montpellier, France during his junior year of college. After college, he lived in Denmark for a year and a half, studying business and working for a startup that built autonomous submarines. 

The creative passions that drive his interest in legal writing also fuel his interest in writing and producing music. He also enjoys mountain biking, skiing, and just generally being outdoors.