Richard Carlton Smyly

Carl Smyly was born and raised in Andalusia, Alabama. He received his undergraduate education at Birmingham-Southern College, where he was selected for the Omicron Delta Kappaand Phi Beta Kappa honorary societies and was valedictorian of his graduating class. He then earned his Juris Doctor degree at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1982.

Mr. Smyly has been assigned the highest possible Peer Review Ratings for legal ability and ethical standards in the Martindale-Hubbell Legal Directory and has been selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America in the specialties of Construction Law; Litigation-Construction; and Commercial Litigation.  For 2015, Mr. Smyly was selected as The Best Lawyers Birmingham Lawyer of the Year for Construction Law. He is a member of the Alabama Defense Lawyers Association, the Defense Research Institute, the American Bar Association’s Forum on the Construction Industry, and the Construction Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section. He was recognized, in 2017, as a Fellow of the Construction Lawyers Society of America (CLSA).

Mr. Smyly’s practice emphasizes commercial litigation and construction law. In the construction area, he has represented general contractors, subcontractors, owners, developers, lenders, program managers, architects, engineers, and manufacturers. The scope of his representation includes contract negotiations, form and procedure development, and pre-litigation dispute resolution, as well as administrative proceedings, arbitration hearings, and bench and jury trials. Mr. Smyly has personally tried many construction cases in state and federal courts.. He has also handled numerous other types of commercial lawsuits, including partnership and stockholder disputes, antitrust cases, intellectual property cases, real estate disputes, products liability cases, professional liability cases, business tort cases, trust and fiduciary duty cases, fraud cases, and complex class actions.

Mr. Smyly has been married to his high school sweetheart, Celia Roland Smyly, for over 30 years. They have three children. He is an active member of Canterbury United Methodist Church, and a member of the Edward Lee Norton Board of Advisors for Management and Professional Education at Birmingham-Southern College.