The results are in!

Thousands of readers of our local newspaper have cast their votes for the best Charleston businesses.

This year, the readers of the The Post and Courier voted for The Peck Law Firm as the best family law firm in Charleston.

We are honored to receive this award and thrilled to have been chosen! We thank each person who voted for our firm. We extend our gratitude to each of you for your support and kind words throughout this last year. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Each day, we help hurting people find solutions for their difficult divorce, family law, and child custody problems. Each divorce matters to us.

We give each of our clients hope – even when all seems hopeless. We listen to each person, judge no one, and assure each of our clients that there is a better life after divorce.

Our family law firm has offices conveniently located in Charleston, Mount Pleasant, and Summerville. We limit our practice solely to alimony, child custody, divorce, legal separation, paternity, and related family law matters. We focus solely on what matters the most to you when “everything is on the line.”

We represent clients in Charleston, Daniel Island, Folly Beach, Goose Creek, IOP, James Island, Johns Island, Kiawah Island, Ladson, Mt. Pleasant, North Charleston, Summerville, West Ashley, and throughout Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester Counties.

If you find yourself struggling with your marriage or need assistance with a difficult family law problem, we will help you. Please call 843-631-7117 now for a free legal consultation with an attorney.

The new school year is here!

For many college and graduate school students, this time of year brings the stress of new classes, tests, and the worry of how they’re going to pay for school. And, it doesn’t stop there. Parents are often forced to borrow to help their children pay for tuition, fees and related costs.

As our response to this crisis in higher education, we are pleased to announce the 2nd annual 2017 Peck Law Firm Scholarship essay contest!

For this year’s contest, we challenge students to tell us how the 2016 presidential election will affect our culture. Our 2017 scholarship essay topic is: What effects will the election of our new president have on American families?

This $2,000 scholarship is open to any American citizen, who:

• has graduated from high school before July 1, 2017,
• has a minimum GPA of 3.0, and
• will be attending college, graduate school, or law school in the fall semester of 2017.

Applying for the scholarship is straightforward. Each student must: (1) complete the scholarship application; (2) submit an essay of 1,000 words or less; and (3) attach a resume and applicable transcripts. The application deadline is May 31, 2017. The winner will be announced on July 31, 2017.

The scholarship application and detailed rules can be found here.

For our 2016 scholarship contest, we had many great essays. We are extremely excited to see what thought provoking essays we will receive this year.

Congratulations again to our 2016 scholarship winner, Bennett Lunn!

Good luck to everyone applying this year!

We have a winner!

This last year, we sponsored the 2016 Peck Law Firm Scholarship contest to help one student with the rising financial tolls of higher education.

The scholarship required students to write an essay explaining the effects that the legalization of gay marriage will have on religion, culture, and/or family law in America. We understand this has always been an extremely controversial topic with many different opposing views. That’s why we wanted to see how students thought this landmark decision would affect America as a whole.

We received over 100 applications from all over the country! Each essay showed exemplary thought and we appreciate all the hard work students put into them.

The essays were all read and judged without any reference to where the writer lived or attended school, or any other identifying information like race, age, or gender. After countless hours and multiple readings of the essays over the course of two months, one essay stuck out as superior to the many outstanding ones we received.

That being said, we are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2016 Peck Law Firm Scholarship is Bennett Lunn!

Bennett graduated from South Aiken High School in the Spring of 2016 with a 3.875 GPA and will be attending the University of South Carolina Honors College this fall. He will be majoring in International Business and Pre-Law.

Not only was Bennett an excellent student throughout his high school career, but he was also involved in numerous extracurricular activities including: National Honor Society, DECA, NJROTC, and Model UN. He was also extremely involved in theatre, student council, and the school newspaper.

Lastly, Bennett was elected to NRECA’s Youth Council, has worked on multiple investment advisory projects, and won the Erskine and USCA scholar awards.

We are extremely proud of Bennett and have posted his winning essay at the bottom of this blog.

We wish we had enough funds to award scholarships to everyone who applied and we regret we were forced to choose only one winner.

We want to thank all our applicants for their outstanding submissions and we can’t wait to see what is in store for the 2017 scholarship contest.

Here is Bennett’s winning essay:

In August 2015, we started our first annual scholarship contest. Since then we have had over 100 applicants apply and submit an essay for consideration by our May deadline. We are humbled by such a strong response to our scholarship this year and deeply appreciate all the efforts and time the applicants have devoted to writing thoughtful responses to our essay question.

The Essay

This year’s question asked students to give their analysis and opinion on the impact of last years landmark Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, on religion, culture, and family law. This was the case in which the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the country. As a family law firm in South Carolina, we were deeply interested in seeing what students believed the impact gay marriage would have on families.

After briefly looking over the responses, we believe we got a fair representation of a variety of viewpoints. Some saw the decision as a good thing while others believe it was detrimental to society. Some expected huge impacts on culture while others that there would be minimal changes to the way things are now. We are excited to read through everyone’s essays more thoroughly and may post a blog in the future summarizing some of the best arguments or insights.

The Statistics

This has been a huge opportunity for us to give back to the community and we are grateful to everyone who has helped spread the word about our scholarship. Our data team managed to put together a few insights about this year’s scholarship and our applicants. Here’s what we found:

• The average essay length was 727 words long
• Nearly 25% (27) of our applicants were high school students
• Most applicants were from South Carolina (21) but we also got a good number of applicants from Texas (18) and Florida (9).

Our judges are currently going through the essays and definitely have a difficult task ahead of them. The final winner will be selected in the coming weeks and will be announced on our blog on July 31, 2016.

The Peck Law Firm believes in the power of opinions and encourages everyone to express them. That is why they have chosen to create a scholarship opportunity to assist students in their school-related expenses.

The scholarship is available for students pursuing or attending:

• A Law-related college
• Graduate School
• A Law School Degree

To apply for the scholarship, students must submit an essay answering the question “What effects will the legalization of gay marriage have on religion, culture, and/or family law in America?”

For complete details and to submit your application check the Peck Law Firm Scholarship Page.

Every year since 1995, Ken Peck has received the Martindale-Hubbell® AV® Preeminent™ rating. This is the highest possible rating that an attorney can achieve in both ethical standards and legal ability.

Martindale-Hubbell® is a platform for attorneys to peer review and rate one another, providing the public with a ranking system of the best in the legal industry. In order to attain this high honor, an attorney is reviewed by other attorneys in similar practice areas. The reviewers are all members of the bar and the judiciary; in other words, they are either lawyers or judges. Peers first review their colleague on adherence to professional standards of conduct and ethics. If the colleague receives a “very high” rating, he or she is then rated on legal ability. This ability is judged based on five different areas: [Read more…]