Save the Date! Appellate Practice Section Social on April 30th in Charlotte

By Jeff Kelly 

We are excited to announce that the Appellate Practice Section’s Spring Social will be held at Dandelion Market in Charlotte on April 30, 2020! Please mark your calendars:

Appellate Practice Section Spring Social
Thursday, April 30, 2020
5 – 7 p.m.
Dandelion Market
118 West 5th St.
Charlotte, NC 28202

As many of you know, last year’s Spring Social was an incredible opportunity for our appellate community to meet in the western part of our state. We are grateful that Bonnie Keith Green has returned to organize this event, so we are confident that it will be another fantastic gathering of our bench and bar.

We hope that you will join us. Please RSVP here!

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Case Management Tips for Paralegals

By Misty Murray

The biggest issue for a lot of Paralegals today is case management. We’re overloaded and overwhelmed, and a lot of the time, we are either working with no case management software or outdated case management software loaded with bells and whistles we simply don’t use, don’t know how to use, and truly don’t need. When law firms do not have procedures in place for case management, it is up to the paralegal to develop the best solutions for his or her cases and manage all the files in their cases.

I coach a lot of paralegals on this very issue. I tell them not to give up, and together, we solve the file management issue. To their surprise, many of the solutions I show them involve using applications readily available to them on their office computers. The key is knowing the tools are there for you and learning how to use them. I’m going to give you my tips on how you can use software on your computer to be the most effective paralegal for any attorney and, more importantly, for your cases.

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Planning the Annual Meeting – A Look Behind the Scenes

By Leslie Pegram 

If you have ever planned an event or continuing education seminar, you know it takes a lot of time and resources. All Paralegal Division CPE planners are volunteers. They take time out of their already busy work days to send emails and hop on phone calls to discuss potential topics, locate speakers and work with Bar Center staff to get the meetings off the ground. While thinking of relevant and useful topics can be challenging, reaching out to attorneys, paralegals and other legal professionals to find potential speakers to ask if they are interested in speaking is even more challenging. All the while, you wait with fingers crossed, hoping that the speaker’s calendar is free on that date.

For live CPE programs, planners start six months out from the date, but for annual meetings, six months is the bare minimum, and it’s really more like 9 to 12 months. The Paralegal Division Council meets and tries to pick potential locations and dates a few years in advance. We then provide that information to the CLE department who work to secure the venue with our preferred dates. Unfortunately, there are times when location and/or date do not line up with the timing or location of previous years.

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Does Your Law Firm Disaster Plan Include a Pandemic?

By Pegeen Turner

For years, I have preached about disaster planning for law firms. When I am performing an audit for a firm, I always ask about a Disaster Recovery Plan, and many times the answer is a blank stare.

In North Carolina, Disaster Recovery Plans usually include things related to hurricanes and other natural disasters, but should we also be planning for a pandemic? With the spread of the coronavirus increasing around the world and the CDC admitting that a spread is likely in the U.S., now is the time to consider brushing off your plan and reviewing it.

Most disaster recovery plans include servers going down and a lack of internet, phones and other basics necessities of business and life. But what happens if that office is a hotbed of illness, and your firm decides (or it is decided for you) to send everyone home for a month in order to stop the spread of the virus? Will your office survive the disruption that this will inevitably cause? Are you prepared? It is time to look at what your options are right now.

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Sports & Entertainment Law Section Articles of Interest (February 2020)

Members of the Sports & Entertainment Law (“SEL”) section found the following recent third party articles to be of potential interest to the section. Feel free to reach out to the SEL section communications chairs (Kelly Ryan and Amanda Whorton) if you would like to submit either personally written pieces or other third party articles found that would be of interest to the entire SEL section members.

XFL’s Second Act in Hands of Lawyers, With Three Running Teams

How Talent Deals Are Evolving As Studios Become Streamers

SAG-AFTRA Revealed Qualifications and Protocols for Intimacy Coordinators

AFM Unveiled a Shorter Schedule for 2020 and On

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E-Discovery Pitfalls: Cell Phone Retention Settings Can Lead to Sanctions for Spoliation of Evidence

By J. Blakely Kiefer

Imagine this scenario: You are an employee who uses your personal cell phone for company purposes to send and receive business-related text messages. Litigation ensues and you, as part of your employment, receive from the company a preservation notice or litigation hold notifying you to preserve and not delete communications relevant to the issues raised by the litigation. Text messages are included within the definition of communications for discovery purposes. A discovery request is served on the company seeking all communications relevant to the litigation, which requires the company and you, as someone with responsive information, to produce your text messages. Only then do you discover that your cell phone has certain retention settings, and is set to automatically delete text messages after thirty (30) days. While you had responsive text messages that should have been produced in litigation, you no longer have those messages because your phone automatically deleted them. Your deleted text messages not only place you in violation of your company’s preservation notice and/or litigation hold, but could potentially result in the company being sanctioned in the litigation for destroying or failing to preserve relevant evidence. Sound farfetched? It’s not.

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DIY Marketing Plan Challenge

By Crystal L. Mathew

An ugly truth of private practice, especially in a small or solo firm, is that marketing is a must. You might argue that you didn’t graduate cum laude from law school to hang out at cocktail parties and write blogs, but if you don’t take steps to promote yourself, no one will. The good news is that with a little guidance, focus, and discipline, you should start to gain clients, work on more interesting cases, and enjoy a thriving practice in less time than you think. Below are some simple steps to put together a relatively painless individual marketing plan that you intend to accomplish over the next 6 months.

Define Your Practice

I meet many lawyers from solo or small firms, whose strategy is to take any business that comes in the door. One week, a lawyer wants to put up a billboard targeting traffic tickets, while the next week, that same lawyer wants to hold estate planning seminars at the local Ruth’s Chris. While billboards and seminars can be perfectly fine strategies if executed correctly, you must be consistent in your messaging and marketing to successfully grow your practice. Forcing yourself to clearly define your practice and narrow your focus is going to help you gain expertise and credibility, and create lasting relationships resulting in more lucrative work. While you may be qualified and willing to do multiple types of law, I recommend focusing on marketing one practice area at a time.

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Message from the Chair of the NCBA Business Law Section

By Ben Baldwin

Message from the Chair of the NCBA Business Law Section

Dear Members of the Business Law Section:

On Thursday, February 13, the Business Law Section held its annual Business Law Institute CLE, which was followed the next day by its Annual Meeting and CLE (which was held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting and CLE of the Bar’s International Law Section), all at the Pinehurst Resort.

I am happy to report that these events were well-attended, and that the CLE programs were once again of the very high standard that our section has come to expect over the years. Again, I would like to thank Kristina Schwartz (Womble Bond Dickinson, LLP [U.S.]) and Jonathan Jenkins (Jenkins Haynes PLLC), and all of the members of their planning committee, for all of their hard work in putting together such a fine program.

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The Future of College Sports Conference (Co-hosted by Duke Law and The Fuqua School of Business)

By Zach Flagel 

Duke Law and The Fuqua School of Business are co-hosting a Future of College Sports Conference to take place on March 6 and 7 (the weekend of the Duke-UNC game).

The conference will be hosting, among others:

  • Jay Bilas, ESPN analyst
  • David Robinson, NBA Hall-of-Famer
  • Congressman Mark Walker (NC)
  • Amy Perko, CEO of the Knight Commission
  • Robin Harris, Executive Director of the Ivy League
  • Donald Remy, NCAA COO/Chief Legal Officer
  • Stan Wilcox, NCAA VP of Regulatory Affairs
  • Leading sports law litigators at Winston & Strawn and Robinson Bradshaw

A full speaker list and registration details can be found at the conference website. Please do not hesitate to reach out to Zack Flagel if you have any questions.

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Tribute to Bill Drew

By Jennifer Tharrington 

Since 2018, the Family Law Section has partnered with the Estate Planning and Fiduciary Law Section on a joint task force to review and amend the Uniform Parentage Act for presentation to the North Carolina legislature. This post is a tribute to a founding member of that task force, William (Bill) Drew, who passed away on February 21, 2020. Bill practiced in Charlotte with the firm now known as K&L Gates, until his retirement in 2002. Post-retirement, Bill remained actively engaged in the Estate Planning and Fiduciary Law Section and was one of the first attorneys to recognize the need for updated parentage statutes in North Carolina that better addressed the needs and definitions of modern families. Bill was a visionary and a pioneer that played a fundamental role in the work of the task force. Although retired and in his 70s, Bill noticed and understood the gap in North Carolina’s parentage statutes long before most other practitioners. He cared deeply about protecting all children and wanted to ensure that North Carolina parentage statutes were fair and inclusive—that no child, regardless of how he or she was conceived or born, would fall into a gap in the law. Bill was willing to actually do the work that was necessary to evolve the law and bring it back into alignment with the current reality of the American family. He generously offered his time, energy, and effort. He didn’t just call for change. He was willing to be the change. Bill’s presence on the task force will be deeply missed, and we hope to continue this important work in his memory.

Jennifer

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