UNC gets $2.7 million to help law students

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has received two contributions totaling $2.7 million to support students in the School of Law.

The first gift of $2.4 million from the Kathrine R. Everett Charitable Trust will create an endowment to fund at least six full-tuition Everett Chancellors’ Scholarships for promising law students from North Carolina. A second gift of $300,000 will endow the Everett Enrichment Fund, which will provide program support for the scholarship recipients.

“With this gift, the Everett family continues its remarkable generosity to Carolina law,” John Charles Boger, dean of the law school, said Wednesday. “We are deeply grateful to alumna Kathrine R. Everett, whose influence as a pioneer in the legal profession continues after her death through her generous philanthropy.”

Everett was a North Carolina lawyer whose career spanned seven decades. She was one of the first women to graduate from the School of Law, at the head of her class, and was the first woman to argue and win a case before the North Carolina Supreme Court. She earned the top score on the state bar exam in 1920. She practiced law until age 97, and at her death in 1992, she designated the law schools at UNC and Duke University as beneficiaries of a major portion of her estate.

“She would be thrilled to know her gifts will serve to attract the very best and brightest students from the state to UNC School of Law and will contribute to the education of the state’s future lawyers and leaders,” said Greg Everett, a trustee and grandson of Kathrine Everett.