Susan M. Smythe

Susan (Susu) Smythe is a problem solver who loves to learn. Her more than forty years of practice has given her an immense breadth of experience in a wide range of areas, including real estate, mergers & acquisitions, finance, corporate and conservation easements. Her approach is to think broadly about a client’s issues, to consider a range of options based on cost/ benefit analysis and reward/risk approaches and to craft creative and pragmatic solutions, using outside of the box thinking. She appreciates that success involves some level of risk. She embraces the challenge of learning the essentials of a client’s business and applying the breadth of her legal knowledge in order to find the “win-win” transactional solution. She is deeply engaged in the practice of law and highly values the depth of her client relationships.

Susu assisted the developers of Daniel Island from the beginning when it was 3,000 acres of farmland to its current status of a fully developed town. In connection with this representation, she drafted the first development agreement statute for South Carolina, negotiated the development agreement with the City of Charleston, assisted with the PUD zoning and participated in the myriad of strategic decisions made over the decades that helped make Daniel Island successful. She is now assisting related parties develop in a similar fashion Cainhoy Plantation which is 9,000 acres in the City of Charleston.

Susu has represented the Medical Society of South Carolina for decades, both before and after its restructure with two regional health systems in the 1990’s. She provides legal advice to the Medical Society in connection with its membership stake in the Roper St. Francis Healthcare System, including various bond financings, real estate transactions and agreements among the other founding members.

Susu’s experience with conservation easements spans four decades, having helped develop a façade easement program prior to the passage of the Uniform Conservation Easement Act and having drafted many of the conservation easements for the ACE Basin as counsel for land trusts and private owners at the beginning of this successful initiative. Susu understands how conservation easements can be used for family planning, mitigation and land protection.