Jim Dedman is an attorney at the law firm of Gallivan, White, & Boyd, P.A. in Charlotte, North Carolina. As such, he represents manufacturers, transportation companies, and other businesses in state and federal litigation. He is licensed to practice law in the states of Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

Since 2010, he has served as the editor of the Abnormal Use products liability law blog, which was named one of the nation’s top law blogs for five years in a row by the editors of the ABA Journal. In 2014, the ABA Journal added Abnormal Use to its Blawg 100 Hall of Fame. As a part of his duties at Abnormal Use, he prepares the site’s annual April Fool’s Day posts (a collection of which you can find here). He has contributed material to Strictly Speaking, The Voice, For The Defense, the ABA Journal, and other legal publications (including the now defunct North Carolina Law Blog). In particular, he enjoys writing and speaking about the usage of social media evidence in litigation and the myths and truths of the infamous McDonald’s hot coffee case.

Born in Tennessee, he spent his formative years in Texas. After graduating from The University of Texas at Austin with a B.S. in Radio/Television/Film, he earned his law degree from Baylor Law School, where he served as a Senior Editor of the Baylor Law Review. Following law school, he worked as a briefing attorney for the Honorable Eva M. Guzman of the Fourteenth Court of Appeals in Houston, Texas. He practiced with a defense firm in Southeast Texas before coming to the Carolinas in 2006.

In the community, he remains active in both the North Carolina Bar Association and the Mecklenburg County Bar. From 2017 to 2018, he served as the Chair of the Mecklenburg County Bar’s Civil Litigation Section. He often plans continuing legal education seminars, including programs on topics ranging from brewery law to the Salem witch trials. He plans the Mecklenburg County Bar’s annual Halloween CLE, as well. From 2014 to 2019, he served as the director of the Charlotte chapter of The Bastiat Society.

He is also the writer and co-producer of the low budget, independent film, Pleadings. A tale of courtroom and other drama, Pleadings won third place in the Narrative Feature category at the Boomtown Film Festival in Beaumont, Texas.

To him, Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” is the perfect rock song, and R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People is a flawless album. Among other things, he misses the Celis Brewery, compact disc singles, and the halcyon days of the 1990’s. His pet peeves include domestic surveillance, Westlaw Next, and, of course, the Star Wars prequels.

You can follow him on Twitter at @JimDedman or email him at jdedman at pobox.com. You can also find him on most other social media platforms (although he claims to have deleted his ICQ and Friendster accounts some time ago).