The dean of the UNC School of Law recently announced he is stepping down from the role.

After serving as dean since 2015, Martin Brinkley said Monday he will leave the position at the end of the 2025-26 academic year, or if Chancellor Lee Roberts can hire a successor before then. 

“When one has lived for a while in this world, one learns to listen to the gentle but firm voice of the writer of Ecclesiastes: ‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted,’” Brinkley said in an email to the law school community, according to the North Carolina Tribune.

“For some months now, that voice has been telling me that when it comes to planting, my time — as dean, at least — is ebbing away.”

UNC later confirmed the announcement through a letter from Provost Chris Clemens on Tuesday, who said he is grateful to Brinkley for his contributions to the law school’s growth in the last decade.

Now one of the longest-tenured of the university’s deans, Brinkley stepped into the role after a near year-long search following Jack Boger’s retirement, who served as the dean for nine years. In 2021, Brinkley was reappointed to a second five-year term. During his time as leading the law school, he continued to serve as counsel with Smith-Anderson in Raleigh, where he is a partner.

A 1992 graduate of the UNC School of Law, Brinkley also served as a law clerk to U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Sam Ervin III before working as an adjunct professor at Carolina from 1996-2000, At age 43, he was named president of the North Carolina Bar Association in 2011, the youngest lawyer in more than 50 years to lead the statewide organization. 

Despite his eventual departure as dean, Brinkley said he intends to stay at UNC in a teaching role.

“I am hopeful that with effort I may become a tolerably adequate teacher,” he said. “I also mean to tackle some oft-postponed writing projects and spend time talking with such of our students as are willing to put up with me.”

Featured photo via UNC School of Law.

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