The legal elite: 2003 Edition.

It should come as no surprise that most of the lawyers considered by their peers to be the very best in their fields in BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA'S first Legal Elite came out on top again. After all, it takes a lot longer than a year to earn such a reputation. Eight of the top vote-getters for the 2002 Legal Elite won again. You'll find out what they've been doing since then, along with profiles of the two newcomers, on the pages that follow.

The rules didn't change, though more lawyers cast ballots this time around, increasing the number of their peers who qualified for the listing. Here's how it works: We bought a list of practitioners in 10 business-related specialties from the North Carolina Bar Association, then mailed ballot's to more than 7,000 lawyers across the state, asking them to vote for the person they thought was the best practitioner in each field.

They were not allowed to vote for themselves. They could vote for members of their firms--but only if they also voted for someone outside their firms in those specialties. To counter bloc voting by big firms, votes cast for outsiders were weighted heavier than those for insiders . And lawyers who didn't get votes from outside their firms didn't make the Legal Elite, no matter how many they received from their partners and associates.

So, to shake things up, should we impose a two-term limit on the top spots? Lawyers and laymen alike can vote on this: E-mail your opinion to bnc@businessnc.com.

For Jim Creekman, growing up was a series of Army bases and anonymous suburbs. New assignments for his father, an intelligence officer, often meant new friends, a new school and a new town. Even if his family stayed in one place for a while, friends came and went as their fathers were transferred.

When Creekman graduated from the University of Virginia law school in 1974, he wanted to put down roots in a place where he would see his neighbors at the grocery store and church. He wanted to be a small-town lawyer. He and his wife settled in her hometown, Hendersonville.

And if it weren't for the thrift crisis of the late '80s, Creekman -- voted best corporate counsel in this year's Legal Elite -- might be there still. He signed on to run a Hendersonville thrift that ended up being acquired by Raleigh-based First Citizens Bank & Trust Co., where he is group vice president for legal services. That makes him the bank's top in-house attorney. He also does work for the smaller banks owned by First Citizens Bancshares Inc., the holding company.

Creekman, 55, has thrived in a big bank by staying the small-town lawyer -- accessible and unpretentious. Every one of First Citizens' about 5,000 employees has his office phone number.

He's known at First Citizens for his mastery of the minutiae of banking law. "Jim took the Texas usury statutes with him when he went to Hilton Head for vacation this spring," says Kathy Klotzberger, another First Citizens lawyer.

But he's known, too, for his ability to translate the law into plain language. "Jim writes some of the most entertaining memos in the bank about some of the driest subjects," says Bill Orr, First Citizens chief credit officer and an executive vice president. "He laces them with humor. He'll start one with a line like, 'Well, here we go again, folks,' or 'I know this is interesting reading, but..."' Granted, this isn't Letterman-class humor, but he is writing for bankers.

In high school, Creekman dreamed of being an Army officer and attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. At the beginning of his senior year, he flunked West Point's then-stringent eye exam because he was nearsighted. "I was crushed." His dad suggested he consider becoming a lawyer instead. So he enrolled at the University of Virginia and majored in government and foreign affairs, with the aim of attending law school. But he remained sufficiently in the thrall of the military to join the Reserve Officer Training Corps. ROTC obligated him to military service after his graduation in 1969. U.S. troops were fighting in Vietnam, but Creekman, who, like his father, was an intelligence officer, served in the United States and Germany. After active duty, he headed back to Charlottesville for law school in 1971.

While an undergraduate, Creekman had met Virginia Prince, who attended Randolph-Macon Woman's College in nearby Lynchburg. They had married a month after he graduated and, when he finished law school, knew they wanted to live in a small town. "I wanted to practice people law, not just be an associate in a big-city firm." He ended up joining his father-in-law's firm.

Early on, he decided he liked commercial law. He did real-estate closings, wrote wills and worked with local businesses. Among his clients was Hendersonville-based First Federal Savings Bank. It had $450 million in assets, nine branches in five counties and more than 100 employees.

"I'm an early morning worker, and Bill McKay, First Federal's president, was, too. One morning about 6:30, he comes over and starts talking about how he was going to retire and what kind of person he was looking for to replace him. I thought he was looking for a suggestion. Then he says, 'Are you interested?"' Creekman was. He loved small-town life, but small-town law was becoming tedious. "If you've done one title in a new subdivision, you've done them all."

He joined First Federal as executive vice president in February 1988 and within two years became president Until he arrived at First Federal, he had no inkling that the thrift industry was mired in the $153 billion savings-and-loan crisis. On July 1, 1991, First Federal was acquired by First Citizens.

In at least one way, Creekman couldn't have picked a better partner. First Citizens, has hewed to the hamlets, maintaining offices in out-of-the-way places such as Beulaville and Snow Hill. It's not unlike its lawyer--a big-town player that cherishes its small-town ties.

Creekman moved to Raleigh and became in-house counsel. New Bern lawyer David Ward was already general counsel of First Citizens BancShares and handled corporate matters such as mergers and acquisition and litigation. Ward fills a role like that of an engineer, designing modifications to the machine that is the state's fourth-largest bank holding company, with $12.1 billion in assets and two banking subsidiaries -- First Citizens, which has 341 branches in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, and Atlantic States Bank, Which has 39 branches in Florida, Georgia and Texas. Creekman is the mechanic who ensures that machine runs smoothly.

The newness of the arrangement meant that Creekman's bosses at the bank -- he reports to the chief financial officer -- let him define his job. He and Klotzberger, in essence, "run a legal help desk." Creekman focuses on lending and real-estate questions, while she takes operational ones.

The job dovetails with another of Creekman's, which is assisting on tricky transactions. Take, for example, a guarantee agreement in which the guarantor says he'll pay off the loan if the borrower fails to. For a recent commercial loan in Georgia, the guarantor wanted specific language. That sent the lenders scurrying to Creekman.

His fingerprints end up on even routine transactions. He draws up the standard forms and many of the procedures that the bank uses for loans. And he has to modify them when a new banking law passes or when First Citizens BancShares expands into another state.

In April, Atlantic States announced plans to expand into Texas. The state has knotty banking and property laws. Creekman calls its usury statutes, the ones he took to the beach, "one of the most difficult things I've read." Plus, its constitution stipulates that every Texan has a right to a homestead -- a house and up to 10 acres in a city, a house and up to 200 acres in the country -- that's exempt from creditors' claims. In other words, if a Texan defaults on any loan besides his mortgage, the lender can't go after his house. "And you can't encumber it. Until recently, you couldn't pull equity out of a house to send your kids to college." He estimates he spent 200 hours puzzling over the Texas statutes and reworking the bank's forms and procedures.

Other projects take him outside the bank. In 1998, Paul Stock, executive vice president and counsel for the North Carolina Bankers Association, recruited Creekman to help draft a new predatory-lending statute for North Carolina. It resulted in a law that took effect in 2000.

Seeing him in his gray pin-striped suit and starched white shirt -- the most traditional of bankers' uniforms -- it's easy to picture him as a military officer. He still arrives at work around the time reveille is played -- 6 a.m. most days. And he regards the law, like the military, as a calling. That's why he admires his father-in-law. "He taught me you have to behave differently as a lawyer. Your role is that of a trusted person -- a counselor -- in the community. And if you do quality legal work in a timely manner, the financial reward is a byproduct of that, not your focus."

Creekman and his wife have two sons -- Dan, 26, and David, 23. Dan is a law student at American University in Washington, D.C. David is an aide to a congressman from Kentucky and hopes to attend law school, too. But their legal education really began years ago in a small town in the mountains, where their dad tried to show them that being a good lawyer isn't just a job but a duty.

Tim Gray

CORPORATE COUNSEL

James E. Creekman

First Citizens Bank & Trust Co.

Born: July 23, 1947, Newark, N.J.

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