Meet Ben Scales

Ben Scales is a lawyer, an activist, and a musician. He has built his law practice on a foundation of protecting his clients’ civil, contractual and intellectual property rights and promoting change in an archaic, unfair, and unjust law.

Ben is a 1991 graduate of the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was a member of the Cumberland Law Review. Before law school, Ben earned a Bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in 1986.

Ben is actively licensed to practice law in both Georgia and North Carolina, and maintains inactive status as a member of the Florida Bar. He is further licensed to practice before the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the United States Court of Federal Claims.

Early in his career, Ben served as Law Clerk to Judge Eric G. Bruggink on the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington, DC, which adjudicates all contract litigation and other claims against the federal government. While working in Washington, Ben was recruited to serve as Law Clerk to Judge Alex Munson, the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, on the island of Saipan. The CNMI’s unique political status as a self-governing commonwealth under the sovereignty of the United States gave Ben a profound education in local, federal and international issues.

Ben relocated to Asheville, North Carolina with his family in late 2002, where they settled into the historic neighborhood of Montford, renovating a classic 1920s bungalow, from where he seeks to reform the laws prohibiting all use of the cannabis plant. Ben is a musician at heart, and is proud of his highly creative family. Cate, his wife of fifteen years, has a prolific career as an interior designer and home improvement project facilitator. Together, Ben and Cate raise their three children, all of whom play music, create art, and excel at school and sports.

Community Involvement:

Ben is an active volunteer in his community. He is currently in his second term as President of the Preservation Society of Asheville & Buncombe County, and he served two terms as President of the PTO at his children’s elementary school. In the world of music business, Ben was a founding board member of the Southeast Regional Folk Alliance, and for several years, he has provided legal advice to that organization and its parent organization, Folk Alliance International, where he served on its Performance Rights Organization Committee. Ben has been a member of NORML since 1994, and the NORML Legal Committee since 2002. And several Saturdays a year, he swings a hammer as a volunteer building houses for Habitat for Humanity in Asheville.