Every community deserves a great team

Mr. Rigsby primarily practices as a litigator focused on business, commercial, employment, and personal injury disputes. Jesse represents local governmental entities, municipal corporations, businesses, non-profits, and individuals in matters ranging from employment discrimination and retaliation, wrongful termination, disability discrimination, contract disputes, and other employment and commercial matters to serious personal injury claims involving premises liability, negligence, and products liability.

Jesse also serves as the Firm’s research attorney and advises clients on numerous legal matters. Prior to joining the Firm, Mr. Rigsby litigated serious personal injury, professional negligence, premises liability, and wrongful death cases as a plaintiff’s lawyer, helping to recover millions of dollars for clients collectively over his career. Mr. Rigsby was selected by his peers as a North Carolina Super Lawyers “Rising Star”, an honor limited to 2.5% of North Carolina lawyers each year, two years in a row.

Mr. Rigsby graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and a minor in philosophy. Jesse received his Juris Doctor from Duke University School of Law, where he graduated with high honors and was selected to the Order of the Coif. While at Duke Law, he also worked as a research assistant for a leading scholar and expert on structured finance and asset securitization. Mr. Rigsby additionally holds a two-year Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree in European Business Law (Juris masterexamen i Europeisk handelsrätt) from Lund University in Sweden and a Master of Arts degree in the Social Sciences from The University of Chicago. While at Lund University, Mr. Rigsby wrote his LL.M. thesis on virtual currencies and anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism regulation from a European Union legal perspective. Jesse
also performed in-house legal and business development work for a Swedish life sciences, biotech, and pharmaceutical group while living in Sweden.

Before moving to Sweden and in the evenings after work as a plaintiff’s lawyer, Mr. Rigsby taught himself Swedish completely from scratch through Swedish detective and spy novels, literally looking up each word until he could read fluently. During his time in Sweden, Mr. Rigsby competed on Swedish national television – in Swedish – on the trivia quiz show Vem vet mest? (translation: “Who Knows the Most?”) – and came in first place on an episode after beating the other seven (Swedish) contestants.

Mr. Rigsby is admitted to practice in North Carolina’s state courts and in the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Middle, and Western Districts of North Carolina and in the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit. His professional memberships include the American Bar Association, North Carolina Bar Association, the Durham County Bar Association.

LL.M., Lund University (Sweden)
J.D., Duke University School of Law
M.A., The University of Chicago
B.A., Vanderbilt University, magna cum laude

North Carolina

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina
• U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina
• U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina

American Bar Association
North Carolina Bar Association
Durham County Bar Association

Swedish