By Dawn Blagrove, Anne Keyworth and Preetha Rini
Where do you work and what is your job title?I work at Emancipate NC and am the Executive Director.
Criminal, Civil Rights, and Social Justice
Painting
I’m inspired by Black joy and liberation.
Meredith Brewer
Spencer Fritts
By Meredith Brewer and Spencer Fritts
Around 1 in 5 children are food insecure in North Carolina, and over 1.4 million North Carolinians – from children to seniors – face food insecurity and hunger in our state. The NCBA YLD’s Legal Feeding Frenzy is an opportunity for our legal community to come together to fight hunger across North Carolina and in your local communities. Running for the month of March, the Legal Feeding Frenzy is a food and funds drive competition to see who can raise the most food per employee to benefit local Feeding the Carolinas food banks. By donating to the food banks within our state, your dollars go further. Every dollar helps provide five meals.
Law firms, solo practitioners, law schools, and corporate counsel are all encouraged to participate! Teams must pre-register here. Get your team together, and register today!
We have all heard the phrase, “new year, new me.” If you have time to scroll through social media or check out the latest news article, you are no stranger to articles or posts about goals for the new year. Eat better. Exercise more. Read a new book every week. Maybe these resolutions sound like a little more than you want to undertake at the moment, especially if you are looking to pass the bar exam in 2022. I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to reinvent yourself simply because it is the beginning of the year.
By Kayla Britt
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when uncertainty was at its highest and I was spending all my time at home, I randomly had the desire to paint. Previously, I did not draw or paint well, so the idea was just to do something fun to pass time. However, painting turned out to be something that I both loved and did well. Painting allowed me to breathe, to center myself, and to escape from reality; this triggered feelings of happiness and safety that helped me survive lockdown.
Nearly two years have passed, and I still use painting to nurture my mental health. I began to wonder what other lawyers or law students do for fun, which led to the creation of the NCBA YLD “Out of the Office” Series. This series highlights what lawyers do when they are out of the office. Featured outlets include, but are not limited to, spoken word, gardening, wood burning, playing instruments, and interior design. The series will be a part of our “Wellness Wednesdays” blog releases, much like this one, and we would love to feature you!
There is no limit, within reason, to what your outlet could be, whether it is sports, collections, creative pursuits, blogging, antiquing, etc. If you are interested in being highlighted in this series, please complete this form: https://form.jotform.com/220064277465153.
Three pieces of my artwork are pictured below.
Claire O’Brien
Michael Cohen
By Claire O’Brien and Michael Cohen
February 1 | Corporate Counsel Section Spotlight | 6:30 p.m.
February 25 | Legal Feeding Frenzy Kickoff Event | 1 to 3 p.m.
March 1-31 | Legal Feeding Frenzy
The YLD and Corporate Counsel Section Knowledge Resource Committee is hosting a panel of top legal professionals who will speak on the exciting intersection of technology, innovation, and the law.
In-house counsel and their clients are presented with new technologies and innovations on a near daily basis. The panelists will discuss the growing legal technology fields such as legal operations, legal tech applications in areas such as contract automation and artificial intelligence, and transactional practice areas such as intellectual property licensing, software-as-a-service agreements, privacy, and media.
During this event, the panelists will address the impact of new technologies and innovations, including any privacy and cybersecurity concerns, and how attorneys might anticipate and evaluate the impact of new technologies and innovation.
The job search can be incredibly stressful, and it is easy to let this stress consume much of one’s mental capacity. One thing that I have learned in law school is that career fairs are a beautiful thing. Plenty of networking and job opportunities are all in one location. Moreover, career fairs are great spaces to practice many different skills from networking to interviewing and cover letter writing!
If you have the slightest interest in a career in public interest, I highly recommend checking out Equal Justice Works. Every year Equal Justice Works hosts a career fair where more than two hundred public interest employers come together and recruit. Before COVID-19, the career fair was in person. I did not have the luxury of attending the career fair in person, so I cannot speak to that specific experience. However, I have done Equal Justice Works two years in a row now and have thoroughly enjoyed the online experience. Even if you do not secure an internship or postgraduate job, the interview process with Equal Justice Works is great practice. Interviews are 20 minutes long and jumping from one Zoom call to the next with different employers tests many different skill sets. I highly recommend checking out the list of employers which is published every year prior to the event. There are employers who practice various kinds of law, and you can apply for any experience that interests you. There is no limit on the number of employers that you can apply to, so do not be afraid to put yourself out there.
The legal profession has an antiquated pedagogical style of existence, from court proceedings to the Socratic teaching method. Many lawyers can be conservative and are opposed to taking risks. Therefore, one may speculate this could be the reason why the law is lethargic with advancing particular initiatives. Many feel that creativity should be left outside the law; however, that perspective is erroneous. As society changes, demand for change also increases to meet current needs. As law school has taught many of us, learning the law is not enough; the beauty is applying the law as it comports with the facts of a case. “Making the law dance with the facts” is advocacy, a creative skill set. Creativity and advocacy are inextricably intertwined within the law and should be embraced by the legal profession.
Kayla Britt
Matt Meinel
By Kayla Britt and Matt Meinel
The YLD’s Law Student Outreach Committee is continuing its flagship Grab-a-Coffee Program (“GaC”) during the spring academic semester. GaC is a statewide program that pairs law students with practicing attorneys based on their practice area(s) of interest. Discussion topics may include the attorney’s path to their current employment, what the practice is like in the attorney’s current areas of law, and any general advice the attorney may have for the student.
Claire O’Brien
Michael Cohen
By Claire O’Brien and Michael Cohen
The YLD Communications Committee, in conjunction with YLD leadership, is excited to announce that its 2022 Writing Competition, “Legal Visionaries,” is open as of today, January 19!
This year, we invite you to tell us how you envision the practice of law changing between now and when you someday retire. What potential change most excites you? Why is this change important? How will it come about? Changes could relate to diversity, technology, remote work, and more – the winning submissions will be creative, thoughtful, and specific. You may address one change in depth or discuss several potential changes. Entries can be fiction or non-fiction, and should be written in accordance with the rules set forth below.
Christian Smith-Bishop
Anna Davis
By Christian Smith-Bishop and Anna Davis
Lawyers, veterans, public sector employers and HR departments all should be aware of an upcoming Supreme Court case that involves a challenge to a state’s sovereign immunity under the federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (“USERRA”). If sovereign immunity is upheld as a basis to deflect private enforcement actions against public entity employers, veterans’ rights groups argue that a substantial blow will be struck to veterans in contravention of both USERRA and Congress’ intent in enacting that law. Whatever the outcome, with the U.S. involved in several overseas conflicts and a projected increase in the Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) enforcement budget, enforcement actions and private claims under USERRA are likely to remain consistent for the foreseeable future; as such, this case will be one to watch.
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