Meet John C. Few
A Committed Advocate for You.
Experience on the bench.
Champion in the courtroom.
Few lawyers have seen the legal system from every angle. John C. Few has — as a trial court judge, as Chief Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals, and as a Justice on the Supreme Court of South Carolina. For 26 years he sat on the other side of the courtroom, evaluating arguments, weighing evidence, and deciding who was right. He knows what moves courts, what persuades judges, and what it takes to win at the highest levels of the law. That experience and knowledge now belong entirely to his clients.
John C. Few
John C. Few — former Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina — has returned to the private practice of law. His statewide practice focuses on complex litigation in many areas of law, drawing on more than 26 years of experience in the judiciary and his earlier years of private practice before joining the bench. His law firm — John Cannon Few, LLC — is based in Columbia, South Carolina.
In his more than ten years on the Supreme Court, Few authored more than 100 published opinions on a wide variety of subjects, including business law and litigation, the admissibility of evidence, civil law and procedure, criminal law and procedure, constitutional law, and more. Before joining the Supreme Court in 2016, Few served six years as Chief Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals, where he also wrote more than 100 opinions on various subjects of law and procedure. Those years on the highest courts of South Carolina — coupled with his ten years as a trial court judge and years before that in the private practice of complex litigation — give Few a deep and broad understanding of the law and its practice.
Few is a 1985 graduate of Duke University with an A.B. in English and Economics, and a 1988 graduate of the University of South Carolina Rice School of Law. During law school, Few was a member of the Order of the Coif and the Order of Wig and Robe, and served as an Editor of the South Carolina Law Review. Few began his legal career as a law clerk to the late Honorable G. Ross Anderson Jr., United States District Judge.
Few has devoted a significant part of his career to teaching law, and writing and speaking about the legal profession. He served for years as a member of the faculty at the National Judicial College and as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Charleston School of Law. He currently teaches Advanced Evidence at Rice School of Law in Columbia, South Carolina. When he stopped counting years ago, Few had given more than 200 Continuing Legal Education lectures in at least fifteen states. Few is also an accomplished writer and speaker. He has given University and Law School commencement addresses, and has delivered speeches entitled ‘The Courage of a Lawyer,’ ‘What It Means to Be a Lawyer,’ and others to audiences in California, Arizona, Texas, and states all over the East. His 1996 speech entitled ‘Citizen Participation in the Legal System’ won first place in the ABA’s nationwide Law Day speech contest.
John is a fellow and a moderator in Liberty Fellowship, and is a member of the moderator corps at the Aspen Institute. John is also a fellow in the inaugural class of the Rodel Leadership Institute's Judicial Fellowship. John completed the Diversity Leaders Initiative through The Riley Institute at Furman University in 2010. In December 2012, the Charleston School of Law awarded John an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.
Few is admitted to practice before the courts of South Carolina, the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.