After more than 30 years of practicing law, the North Carolina Bar Association has awarded former Judge Shirley L. Fulton with the 2014 Chief Justice’s Professionalism Award. Fulton received the award in late January at a joint meeting of the N.C. State Bar and the N.C. Bar Association in Raleigh.

She learned in late October that she was going to receive the award and it came as a great surprise.

“I do not know who nominated me,” she said in a phone interview. “It was a very humbling experience to know that my colleagues thought that much of me that they would pick me to receive the award.”

Fulton was chosen by the Professionalism Award Committee for her selfless dedication and commitment to the principles of professionalism and public service in North Carolina.

In a list of many firsts, Fulton was the first African American Superior Court judge in North Carolina and her picture hangs in the Superior Court house in Charlotte where she is the only African American.

She graduated from North Carolina A&T State University in 1977 with a degree in business administration. It was while working in the Guilford County Register of Deeds office after her junior year that she realized she wanted to be an attorney.

“I saw them come in and file papers and do their research and I said, ‘I want to be a lawyer’,” she said.

After graduation from N.C. A&T, Fulton went on to Duke University School of Law before working at a small law firm in Durham doing appellate work and being offered a position as an assistant district attorney in Charlotte – a long way from the cotton and tobacco farm she grew up on in Kingstree, S.C.

Her tenure as a prosecutor in the Queen City led her down the path to become a judge. With about 16 years on the bench, Fulton served under the titles of district court judge, resident superior court judge and senior resident superior court judge.

“I left the bench in 2003, went back in to practice for five years. Since then I’ve been serving as a mediator,” Fulton said.

For the five years that she went back into practice, Fulton practiced in business and community economic development law, the latter of which she’s found to be her passion.

“I learned a lot about how the law can impact communities and I was doing something that benefited the community and the people who lived in that area,” she said.

In addition to serving as a mediator, she has also taught at the Charlotte School of Law, owns a small business in one of the neighborhoods where she got involved and earned her MBA from the McColl School of Business at Queens University. And of her success began at A&T.

“A&T was my first experience away from Kingstree. I came like a deer in the headlights at 16 years of age. It really built a foundation. It sort of grew me up,” she said.

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