Vince Lombardi, ‘Groundhog Day’ and the Pursuit of Perfection

By Russell Rawlings

What, pray tell, does legendary football coach Vince Lombardi have in common with the comedic actor Bill Murray?

The pursuit of perfection.

“Perfection,” Lombardi famously stated, “is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

As for Murray, it wasn’t what he said about perfection, it was what his character did about it in the movie “Groundhog Day.”

The movie is set in Punxsutawney, Pa., the epicenter of this nation’s annual observance of Groundhog Day — where this morning Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, forecasting six more weeks of winter. In the fictional “Groundhog Day,” the main character, played by Murray, starts out as a thoroughly disgusting weatherman who ultimately wins the hand of his beautiful colleague, played by Andie McDowell.

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The CLE You Need On NC’s New Power of Attorney Act

If you deal with matters related to power of attorney in North Carolina, you’ve probably heard the rules changed on Jan. 1.

Your next best chance to get up to speed on these changes comes on Wednesday, Jan. 10, with a video replay of the North Carolina Uniform Power of Attorney Act CLE at the N.C. Bar Center in Cary.

Prepared by the NCBA Elder & Special Needs Law and the NCBA Estate Planning & Fiduciary Law Sections, the CLE offers:

  • Sample POA documents;
  • Instruction from the law’s primary drafters, who teach the course; and
  • Drafting tips from the authorities on the law

Start your New Year right with 6 hours of CLE credit. Click here to find out more about this program.

 

 

 

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Five N.C. Business Court Pro Tips, From the Law Clerk Perspective

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By Tim Lendino

Recently I asked a few Business Court law clerks the following question:  What are some practice pointers that you would give to attorneys appearing before the Court?  Although I clerked at the Business Court and should presumably have some insight into my own question, it’s been a while since I clerked so I thought it would be beneficial to get a fresh perspective.  Below is my summary of five tips I received.  Disclaimer:  These are the views of certain anonymous individuals and should not be attributed to the Business Court.

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Giving Heart To the Tin Man: The Intersection Of the IT/OT in Modern Manufacturing

By David Furr

Protection of key manufacturing and critical infrastructure systems must be provided the same priority as other sectors of our economy if we are to protect basic operations and competitive superiority to which we have become accustomed.[1] Basic industrial and manufacturing operations that have long relied on commercial off-the-shelf products are sitting targets to the same maladies that enterprise networks face.  Modern industrial central systems (ICS or SCADA) must employ a security protocol that reduces operational risks, prevents system breaches and becomes compliant with all best practices while leveraging existing infrastructure and maximizing return of investment on existing equipment.

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Our Firm Let Insurance Providers Compete and Wound Up Saving 13% On Our 2018 Healthcare Costs

By Michael R. Epperson

Remember the good old days when healthcare benefits were provided at a premium level for a small additional cost to the employer?  Many of us have not been around long enough to enjoy that recollection!

Today, healthcare costs are a major line item in most law firms’ budgets and these costs are growing at an alarming rate, motivating firms to work hard to find ways to reduce rates.  Healthcare costs are also an important consideration for recruiting and hiring.  New employees are scrutinizing a firm’s offered healthcare benefits during their job decision-making process.  Let’s face it, most mid-size law firms pay attorneys and staff within a similar range.  So, many firms are trying to attract the same top talent, and those candidates take a careful look at not only salary, but also at other financial benefits of their employment such as the existence of a 401K, bonus potential, and, importantly, the cost to them of healthcare coverage.

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Thank You, NCBA Members For All You Do; This Turkey Day Poem Is Just For You

By Josh McIntyre, NCBA Membership Director

The leaves are turning colorful shades

Of orange and red and more.

And it’s always around this time of year

I think of what I am thankful for.

 

As always I’m glad my family and friends

Put up with my antics and quirks,

But I am also extremely grateful

For quite a few things at work:

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Holiday Eating Advice From Man’s Best Friend: Treat Thanksgiving Like Any Other Day

By Russell Rawlings

Brownie doesn’t distinguish between Thanksgiving Day and any other day of the year. Nor does he grasp the concept of Saturday and Sunday, which most of us refer to as the weekend.

Brownie doesn’t know when it’s Thanksgiving. He’s always grateful for his morning walk.

All our beloved four-legged friend knows is that when my feet hit the floor every morning, we’re going for a long and rewarding walk. That’s all he cares about.

There’s a lot to be gained from this strategy, or better yet not gained, if you’re approaching Thanksgiving Day and the subsequent holiday season with fear and trepidation over what you will eat and what you will weigh once it’s all said and done.

For starters, control the damage. Even if you can’t approach Thanksgiving Day with the indifference that Brownie will undoubtedly display, try to limit your feeding frenzy to one day. A day off from self-control and discipline is not a license to eat uncontrollably throughout the extended weekend or, worse still, all the way through New Year’s Day.

The holiday season can be tough on those of us who are attempting to lose weight or striving to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Even for a nation that routinely enjoys an overabundance of food and drink, this can be a treacherous time, what with all the parties and the seemingly endless supply of baked goods that mysteriously appear in the home and workplace.

Lord knows I don’t have all the answers, but I have been waging this war long enough to learn a few things about navigating these calorie-infested waters. Here are three of them.

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E-Discovery As Part Of a Winning Strategy For Every Firm

By Joyce Brafford

You have clients. They use email. They send text messages. They create documents. They take pictures. They make phone calls. They send messages on social apps. Imagine if one of your clients came to your office, and told you they were being sued. And all those personal and professional messaging systems were sources of potential evidence. How in the world would you avoid spoliation of evidence? How would you ensure you were gathering all the materials required by a request for discovery? How could you manage all the data you needed to sift through from the opposing party?

It’s a huge challenge. And as our clients create more data every day, there’s no excuse to be puzzled by e-Discovery. To that end, we’re asking Kelly Twigger of ESI Attorneys to tell How to Use e-Discovery and Win at a one-hour webinar on Nov. 29. To help us prepare for the program, Kelly is sharing answers to three essential questions anyone who needs to know more about e-Discovery should ask.

Kelly Twigger

1. Why does every lawyer need to understand e-Discovery?

Put simply, all of the evidence your clients need to prove their cases is electronic. The difference between paper and ESI (electronically stored information) is that clients used to be able to tell what was important and hand it to their attorney. They usually kept it all together or were able to find it easily. Now they can’t always find it all in all the systems that we use to create, send and receive ESI, and it has become the attorney’s job to know the right questions to ask to find out where it’s located, how to search it and how to get at the data for use in a case. It’s a very new complex and ever-evolving discovery process that we are facing. You can’t do discovery without ESI anymore and how you approach e-Discovery can make or break your case.

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The Fantastic Five: Randolph Co. Attorneys Unite To Fight Legal Aid Budget Cuts

Editor’s note: As we #celebrateprobono this week, we take a look at one group of lawyers’ innovative approach to helping their community.

By Nihad Mansour

When Thomas Robins heard about a $1.5 million cut to the budget for Legal Aid of North Carolina in 2015, he realized LANC would no longer be able to send an attorney to Randolph County to represent victims of domestic violence.

Without hesitation, Robins, a partner at Bunch, Robins & Stubblefield in Asheboro, assembled a team of attorneys — Sarah Lanier, Jennifer Bennett, Margaret Megerian and Brooke Schmidly — to not only temporarily fill this gap, but to ensure a long-term commitment to addressing the unmet legal need of domestic violence victims in Randolph County. Robins developed a weekly on-call rotation system for his team of attorneys to represent victims of domestic violence in Randolph County in domestic violence hearings.

Since spring of 2016, the group has collectively represented 114 victims of domestic violence in Randolph County.

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Pro Bono Week: Celebrate Giving Back, Become Part Of the N.C. Pro Bono Honor Society

By Sylvia Novinsky

Lawyers, you have another reason to smile this week.

It’s National Celebration of Pro Bono Week, an annual initiative spearheaded by the ABA Standing Committee on Public Service to enhance and expand efforts to increase access to justice for all. The #celebrateprobono effort gives legal communities around the country an opportunity to recognize the good legal volunteer work being done. In North Carolina, we have much to celebrate in this regard.

In January 2017, the N.C. Pro Bono Resource Center established North Carolina’s first statewide voluntary reporting process. This process allows attorneys to report information about their pro bono legal service in 2016. What we heard through that process was encouraging: Attorneys reported more than 25,000 hours of pro bono legal service provided last year. Further, 89.3 percent of respondents reported providing some legal volunteerism, and 20 percent of respondents engaged in all the types of activity included in the rule: pro bono legal service, law improvement activity, non-legal community service, and financial contributions to support civil legal aid.

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