Greetings from the New Section Chair

By Nahale Freeland Kalfas

Greetings Administrative Law Section Members –

It is my honor to serve this year as chair of the Administrative Law Section that has provided me with collegiality and useful information throughout the years. There is no doubt that this coming year will continue to be an opportunity to further refine our ability to counsel creatively, develop new skills, and pivot for our clients in challenging times. It is my hope that our section will continue its robust level of discussion and content with committee reports, discussion boards, blog posts and CLEs. I also hope that we can reach out to our colleagues newer to practice to provide both formal and informal mentorship opportunities, learning as much from them as we teach.

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Tax Advantages of S Corporations

By John G. Hodnette

Limited liability companies can elect to be taxed under federal and state law in a number of different ways. One popular choice for small business owners is for an LLC to elect to be an S corporation.

The primary tax advantage of operating as an S corporation is minimizing self-employment taxes. When operating as a sole proprietorship (whether through a disregarded LLC or not), an individual’s profits are subject to a 15.3% self-employment tax in addition to the individual income tax. The same is true for wages paid to employees of the S corporation (although in that case 7.65% is paid by the employee while the other 7.65% is paid by the S corporation itself). The IRS requires owners of an S corporation to pay themselves a reasonable salary, and not doing so (or paying too small of a salary) is the subject of many employment division audits of S corporations. However, S corporations are not required to pay out all of their profits as salaries to their employees. Rather, the IRS (in publications such as FS-2008-25) requires only that the salary be reasonable.

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Isolation

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The NCBA Professional Vitality Committee creates sourced articles centered on reducing inherent stress and enhancing vitality in the lives of legal professionals and offers those resources as a benefit for members of the North Carolina Bar Association.

By Michele Morris

In the morning, immediately upon waking, my mind screaming at me: “Get up. Get out of bed. You can do it. You can do this. Get up.” Not exactly high motivation. But I would indeed get up and sit in front of my computer, alone, in my apartment, drinking my first cup of coffee. I still had a small number of paying clients and an appellate brief due date looming. Even though writing it felt like pushing a rock up Mount Everest, I wrote.

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Welcome, Division Members

By Shawana Almendarez

Welcome to all our division members. Thanks to all who have served and will serve! I am honored to serve as the 2021-2022 Paralegal Division Chair. Last year, our division worked during unprecedented times and continued to advance its mission and achieved many goals.  The Paralegal Council and its committees served our members and communities through countless virtual social events, assisted with pro bono services projects, membership giveaways, and scholarships.

The division’s success is an attribute of the hard work of our Paralegal Council Committees and our members’ participation. The Paralegal Council has 13 committees — Bylaws, Continued Paralegal Education, Diversity and Inclusion, Ethics, Long Range Planning, Membership, Paralegal Student Relations, Pro Bono, Publication/Blog (Communications), Section Liaisons, Survey, Technology, and Utilization. Our members are encouraged to get involved by investing time to serve on any committee of interest to them. Check out the bylaws on the division’s community page for committee descriptions.

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Spotlight: Billy Clarke

By Rick Kolb

Billy Clarke is a partner at Roberts & Stevens in Asheville. Billy has long been active in the Environment, Energy, & Natural Resources Section and served as chair of the section in 2009-2010. For those who attend the annual section meeting on alternate years in Asheville, you probably know Billy as the host of our Friday evening social at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, his family’s farm near Asheville.

Billy Clarke

Billy was born in Bat Cave, North Carolina and grew up as one of eight children (two girls and six boys; Billy was next to youngest) on his family’s Fairview dairy farm, where they also raised tobacco, apples, chickens and pigs. Billy says raising eight kids and gardening kept his mom busy, and he remembers meat from dairy cows being tough.

Billy’s father, James McClure Clarke, came to the Carolinas in the 1930s after graduating from Princeton in 1939. He ran the Farmer’s Federation, a farm cooperative that was squeezed out of business by larger cooperatives in the 1950s. Jamie Clarke was the editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times for 15 years, served in the North Carolina legislature in the 1970s, and served three terms as a U.S. Congressman in the 1980s. Billy’s sister Annie and her husband live in the “big” house at the family farm, and Annie’s husband is in the North Carolina legislature as one of three representatives from Buncombe County.

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Court of Appeals Cases of Interest This Week

This week, the Court of Appeals offered two opinions of interest to administrative law practitioners.

Powell v. Cartret, July 20, 2021, Court of Appeals, COA20-406 (Judge Allegra Collins), Published.

Error to subject records under N.C. Gen. Stat. 58-10-430 to subpoena; no error to subject records under N.C. Gen. Stat. 58-30-62 to subpoena.

Although on its face, it appears to relate solely to the insurance statutes, some of the language has potential for broader application. The court bases its decision in part on the lack of specific language requiring that the requested records be provided on order of a court with jurisdiction.

Wynn v. Frederick, July 20, 2021, Court of Appeals, COA20-472 (Judge Fred Gore), Published.

Sovereign immunity, judicial immunity, and interlocutory appeal

Finds sovereign immunity is waived with regard to magistrates because they are “other officials” under the law in question, and, that judicial immunity is inapplicable.

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Ergo? What? My Aching Back

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The NCBA Professional Vitality Committee creates sourced articles centered on reducing inherent stress and enhancing vitality in the lives of legal professionals and offers those resources as a benefit for members of the North Carolina Bar Association.

By Theresa Joan Rosenberg

We lawyers are terrific listeners. But . . . do we listen to our bodies?

Many of us go into our respective offices – whether it’s in a spiffy office building, or, now, since last year’s initial COVID-19 “shutdown” – at the kitchen table, in a niche adjacent to a stairway, or the basement. Most of us log in to a computer and move forward with tasks of the day. How do you feel in your current workplace?

In 2021, a freelancing marketplace reported that about one-fourth of the American workforce will be remote. Two of five American respondents to a survey about working remotely since COVID-19 reported new or increased pain in back, shoulder and wrists.[ii] A digital health company found almost half of their surveyed workers had back and joint pain; almost three-quarters said the pain was new or worse.[iii]

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President Biden Weighs in on Occupational Licensing

By Jeffrey P. Gray

Opposition to the licensing of occupations and professions is not a partisan issue. It is a philosophical one. The advocates for change, reform, or outright elimination come from all sides.

The first U.S. President to address the issue was Barack Obama when in 2015, the White House released a seventy-six page report prepared jointly by the Department of Treasury Office of Economic Policy, the Council of Economic Advisors, and the Department of Labor: “Occupational Licensing: A Framework for Policy Makers.” President Donald Trump talked about it, but little to nothing was done. While some commentators have opined that the former president’s only initiative was to undo everything Obama set in place, the one area the two agreed on – and a policy Trump embraced – was “fixing” occupational licensing. Within months of his appointment in July 2017, then Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta called on state lawmakers to repeal licensing laws.

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A Message from the Chair

By Katie H. King

Dear Family Law Section Members,

It is an honor to serve as your Section Chair for 2021-2022. Thank you to Mitchell Kelling for her leadership as Chair last year and for all those who served and continue to serve as committee chairs and in other leadership roles. And thank you to Cheyenne Merrigan, our Communities Manager with the NCBA.

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Checking In: July 20, 2021

Compiled by Jessica Junqueira

Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP Announces New Partner

J. Michael Wilson has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP as partner in the Charlotte office. He will practice in the firm’s Tax and Trusts and Estates groups. His areas of focus include taxation, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and fund formations. He has experience in real estate transactions, such as joint ventures, acquisitions, development, sales, and more. Wilson also has prior experience as a tax consultant. He graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law with a J.D. and from UNC Chapel Hill, where he received a B.S. in business administration with a concentration in accounting.

Austin Rowe Kessler Joins Hall Booth Smith

Austin Rowe Kessler has joined the Asheville office of Hall Booth Smith. He focuses on insurance defense and general liability. Kessler has experience conducting trials and hearings in District Court and Superior Court. He has  practiced in the areas of family law and civil litigation, estate planning, and criminal defense. Kessler graduated from Campbell Law School with a J.D. and from Guilford College with a B.A. in criminal justice and a minor in sociology.

Bangura Joins the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin

The Law Offices of James Scott Farrin announced that Sheri Bangura has joined the firm as a personal injury attorney. Bangura has worked for insurance companies for more than 15 years as a multi-state insurance claims adjuster. Sheri graduated cum laude from North Carolina Central University School of Law, where she earned a  J.D. While in law school, she was a torts tutor and research assistant and was involved in the NCCU Student Bar Association as a 2L representative. She holds a a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice with a minor in sociology from Old Dominion University.
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