Robert D. Hunter, IADC Past President, was recently elected Chair of the Board of Trustees for the National Judicial College. The National Judicial College, based in Reno, Nevada since 1964, remains the only educational institution in the United States that teaches courtroom skills to judges of all types from all over the country, Indian Country, and abroad. The categories of judges served by this nonprofit and nonpartisan institution decide more than 95 percent of the cases in the United States.
Rob practiced at Lange Simpson for 23 years before accepting the position of General Counsel for Altec, Inc., and its subsidiaries. For six years immediately prior to his joining Altec in 1999, Rob served as Chair of his firm’s Executive Committee.
Rob served as President of the International Association of Defense Counsel (2008-09) and on its Board of Directors (2004-10), as President of Lawyers for Civil Justice (2014-15) and on its Board (2007-10 and 2012-2016), as President of the Product Liability Advisory Council (2016-2018) and on its Board (2013-), and on the Board of the Defense Research Institute (2007-10). He also has served on the Advisory Boards for the Corporate Counsel College, (2004-2015), the International Corporate Counsel College (2010, 2014), the Southwestern Institute for International and Comparative Law (2011-2018), and the Duke Law Center for Judicial Studies (2014- ). In 2014 Rob served as Dean of the Corporate Counsel College. Rob is actively involved with The Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers.
In serving his profession, Rob has broken new ground for in-house counsel. Rob was the first in-house counsel in 76 years to be elected President of IADC. In 2014 he became the first in-house counsel to serve as President of LCJ and the first in-house counsel to serve as Dean of the Corporate Counsel College. In part because of these milestones, in 2013 Rob was named to the inaugural Corporate 100, a list of the top 100 in-house counsel in the US and was named Outstanding Corporate Counsel by the Birmingham Business Journal. Under Rob’s leadership, in 2014 Altec’s legal team was named best in the United States in Technology, by Legal 500.
Outside of his professional endeavors, Rob sits on the Advisory Board of the Mississippi State University College of Engineering and serves as Vice Chair of the Summit Charter School Foundation in Cashiers, NC. In 2008 he was named “Distinguished Fellow” by the College of Engineering and in 2014 an “Alumni Fellow” at MSU.