The holidays are fast approaching, and many of us are looking forward to holiday parties, delicious goodies adorning the breakroom counters, festive decorations, gifts, and more. However, it is not all fun, as the holidays bring an abundance of ethical concerns for the workplace. Below are some helpful tips and reminders going into the holidays.
Holiday Decor
Although there are no specific rules regarding holiday decor, there is an Establishment Clause in the U.S. Constitution that forbids Congress from establishing a state religion. Also, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals stated, “No holiday season is complete, at least for the courts, without one or more First Amendment challenges to public holiday displays.” Skoros v. City of New York, 437 F.3d 1 (2006).
https://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.png00Paralegalshttps://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.pngParalegals2022-12-16 14:37:082022-12-16 14:37:08Paralegal Ethics: Deck the Halls, or Maybe Not!
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 capped the deduction available to individual taxpayers under Section 164 to $10,000 for 2017 through 2025. That deduction includes state income taxes, real property taxes, and personal property taxes. To benefit taxpayers who own partnerships or S corporations, many states have enacted elective pass-through entity (“PTE”) taxes that allow the entity to pay the owners’ state income taxes at the entity level. That is significant because Congress explicitly stated the $10,000 limitation does not apply to pass-through entities.
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Barnwell Whaley Patterson & Helms, PLLC Announces New Attorney
Brennan Ferguson has joined the firm. She practices in the areas of civil litigation, construction, insurance coverage and defense, and real estate. She has previously focused on creditor-debtor law, construction law, insurance defense, and litigation. Ferguson also volunteers with the Innocence Project. She received a J.D. from the Appalachian School of Law, where she was the Associate Editor for the Law Review and a member of Phi Delta Phi Honor Society. She holds a B.A. in history from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
New Attorney Joins Hall Booth Smith
Jacquelyn Miner has joined the firm’s Asheville office. Miner’s practice is focused on general liability, governmental liability, insurance coverage, medical malpractice, and professional malpractice and ethics. Miner has previous experience in several other areas of law, including family law, estate planning, administration and probate, and more. Miner served as a staff attorney with Pisgah Legal Services. She received a J.D. from William & Mary Law School, where she was recognized with the CLEA Outstanding Clinical Student Award and Public Service Award. While in law school, she provided more than 600 hours in clinical services. She worked on behalf of veterans in the Lewis B. Puller Jr. Veterans Benefits Clinic. She received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Mars Hill University.
McGuireWoods Names New Partner
Allison P. Tanner was elected to partner. Tanner works in the firm’s Charlotte office. She focuses her practice on tax and employee benefits and represents employers on employee benefit and executive compensation matters arising under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code. She provides counsel to both public and private companies. Before becoming an attorney, she worked as a lead trial paralegal. She earned a J.D., with honors, from the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she was the recipient of the Smith/Shaver Merit Scholarship and a staff member of the North Carolina Law Review. She also holds a B.S. in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In the early 1990s, I conducted mediations for divorcing couples and had a steady growing business. In most cases, one party or both had attorneys with whom they consulted, but those attorneys never came to the mediation meetings. So, I would draft a set of notes, recording the agreements the parties reached and one or the other would take it to an attorney to have it drafted into a binding separation agreement. Finally, I mediated with an elderly couple who had little money, and neither had an attorney. I prepared my notes and gave them to the couple and instructed them to have an attorney prepare their separation agreement. They had great difficulty finding an attorney who was willing to undertake that task, except one who would write it for $10,000, which they thought was outrageous. They came back to me to discuss what to do next. I remember the old man, haltingly pointing to the diploma on my wall. “You’re an attorney, aren’t you?”
https://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.png00DisputeResolutionhttps://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.pngDisputeResolution2022-12-13 09:23:352022-12-13 09:23:35When Should Mediators Be Able To Write The Settlement Agreement For Parties?
Elysia Prendergast-Jones and Sarah Hill McIntyre are Co-Chairs of the Pro Bono Committee of the Family Law Section. They have taken on the important task of serving the underserved in addition to managing regular cases. The Pro Bono Committee is always looking for volunteers to assist clients across the state.
In that vein, the Pro Bono Committee has spearheaded an effort with the Paralegal Division to provide one-day clinics in North Carolina. Listen to this video blog to learn how you can become a part of this important movement in addition to supporting your colleagues!
https://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.png00FamilyLawhttps://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.pngFamilyLaw2022-12-09 11:10:512022-12-09 11:13:19How to Stop Failing at Getting Your Pro Bono Hours
The Supreme Court of North Carolina recently approved amendments to Rules of Professional Conduct 1.6 (Confidentiality of Information) and 1.9 (Duties to Former Clients). The amendments permit a lawyer to disclose information acquired during the representation of a former client if the information is contained in the public record and disclosure is not detrimental to the client. Prior to these amendments, an attorney was not allowed to disclose such information unless she had informed consent from the client.
In addition, the North Carolina Bar Council adopted and approved for transmission to the Supreme Court proposed amendments to Rule 1.15 and Rule 4.1. The proposed amendment to Rule 4.1 makes a technical correction to the language in the comment. The proposed amendments to Rule 1.15 contain new definitions of common ledgers used in monitoring a lawyer’s trust account and rearrange some parts of the rule for improved understanding and application. The Supreme Court has not yet acted on these amendments.
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In April 2021, the Paralegal Division and the Family Law Section partnered for the first time to hold a Pro Se Custody and Family Law Advice Clinic for residents of Wake County. This pilot was held at the Blanchard Community Law Clinic and successfully served eleven clients by answering their family law questions and drafting pro se custody packets for several of them.
Since the first clinic was so successful, Guilford County family law attorney, Manisha Patel, approached the Paralegal Division with the backing of the Greensboro Bar Association and its Family Law Section and Pro Bono Committee about partnering for a clinic in Guilford County. The clinic is set for February 11, 2023, from 9 a.m. to noon at Elon Law School.
https://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.png00Paralegalshttps://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.pngParalegals2022-12-08 16:00:382022-12-08 16:59:25The Paralegal Division and Family Law Section Partner Again to Serve Guilford County Residents with Family Law Issues
This is the second of three installments of this article.
I. Contemporaneous Written Acknowledgment Rules for Charitable Contributions of Aircraft and Vehicles; Izen vs. Commissioner (5th Cir. 2022).
Mr. Izen donated a 50% interest in an aircraft to a charitable organization. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the earlier decision of the Tax Court denying any charitable contribution deduction because the purported contemporaneous written acknowledgment (“CWA”) letter failed the strict requirements of Section 170(f)(8)(B). There are specific substantiation requirements when the subject of the gift is a vehicle or an airplane with a value in excess of $500. Under Section 170(f)(12)(B), the CWA from the donee organization must include the name and taxpayer identification number of the donor.
In 2016, when the Greensboro Legal Aid office lost the funding necessary to provide representation for members of the community navigating Domestic Violence, or “DV,” court, Tom Robins, an attorney at Bunch & Robins and member of the Family Law Section of the North Carolina Bar Association, stepped up.
In discussing his decision to begin this project, Tom is practical, and it is easy to see why he’s been a successful family law attorney for decades.
“Legal Aid wasn’t in a position to accept these cases, and it’s what I do so, naturally, it’s what I can do to help. I then asked some other lawyers if they would be willing to take it on.”
On October 12, 2022, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.(AWF) vs. Lynn Goldsmith, et al.[1] The main issue revolves around “transformative” use under the Copyright Act[2] and how transformative the work must be to be protected by the doctrine of Fair Use and not infringe another’s copyright.[3] In 1994, the Supreme Court considered a case regarding transformative use, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., in which the Court held that 2 Live Crew’s parody on Roy Orbison’s song, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” was protected under fair use and that the lower court erred in finding otherwise because they solely looked at the commercial nature without weighing the other fair use factors.[4] The Court also defined “transformative” as “add[ing] something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with [a] new expression, meaning, or message.”[5] The more a work transforms the original, the less the other fair use factors will weigh in the analysis because transforming a work emphasizes “the heart of the fair use doctrine’s guarantee of breathing space within the confines of copyright.”[6] Transformative use also came up in 2020 with Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., where the Court found Google’s use of a portion of code from the Sun Java API, a computer program using Java programming language, to be “new” and “transformative” enough to constitute fair use.[7]
https://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.png00IntellectualPropertyhttps://ncbarblogprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Blog-Header-1-1030x530.pngIntellectualProperty2022-12-06 10:49:122022-12-06 10:49:40Transforming Transformative Use: A Synopsis of Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith
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Allison P. Tanner was elected to partner. Tanner works in the firm’s Charlotte office. She focuses her practice on tax and employee benefits and represents employers on employee benefit and executive compensation matters arising under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code. She provides counsel to both public and private companies. Before becoming an attorney, she worked as a lead trial paralegal. She earned a J.D., with honors, from the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she was the recipient of the Smith/Shaver Merit Scholarship and a staff member of the North Carolina Law Review. She also holds a B.S. in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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