Jonathan Dunlap

Jonathan built an early reputation among his colleagues as the lawyer other lawyers turned to with their problems. Since focusing on appellate work, he has briefed and argued before the Fourth Circuit, the North Carolina Court of Appeals, the North Carolina Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. He has also been retained to serve as an appellate consultant in jury trials, providing real time guidance and briefing to preserve appellate issues in high stakes cases. 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.

Jonathan is a member of the North Carolina Appellate Rules Committee, a forum where appellate judges, professors, and other appellate attorneys discuss the rules of appellate procedure where they can fail, and the unanticipated ways they sometimes work in order to recommend changes to the North Carolina Supreme Court. He has taught classes to trial lawyers on the preservation of appellate issues during trial. He is a member of both the North Carolina Bar Association's Appellate Practice Section and a member of the Land Use section. He is the President of the Buncombe County Bar and a former partner of one of Asheville’s oldest and largest firms.

Jonathan 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 was active in scouting, is an Eagle Scout, and a Brotherhood member of the Order of the Arrow. 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. Before law school, 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 composing and producing music. He also enjoys mountain biking, skiing, and just generally being outdoors.