A UBE For NC: You Say Bring It On

By Amber Nimocks

A few months ago, we asked NCBA members to respond to a short survey on the growing possibility of North Carolina’s adoption of a Uniform Bar Exam. More than 300 readers chimed in. Below is a snapshot of the results along with a few of the many reader comments. To read all the comments poll takers left, go to the North Carolina Lawyer page of our website.

 

POLL RESULTS

What is your reaction to the N.C. Board of Law Examiners’ move toward adopting the Uniform Bar Exam?

The majority of the 311 respondents, 59 percent, reacted in favor of the change.

89 or 29 percent: “It’s about time.”

95 or 30 percent: “It’s a good idea.”

127 or 41 percent: “It’s an abomination.”

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Key Changes to NC Rules of Appellate Procedure

By Laura Graham

On Jan. 1, 2017, a comprehensive revision of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure took effect. The revised Rules apply to all cases appealed on or after Jan. 1. The revised Rules include some brand new provisions, and they also incorporate several changes that had been in effect for some time pursuant to stand-alone orders of the North Carolina Supreme Court.[1]  The revised Rules are available here: http://www.aoc.state.nc.us/www/public/html/pdf/therules.pdf.

No doubt, attorneys who regularly handle appeals have already scoured the revised Rules for brand new changes. But for the benefit of the rest of us, I’ve chosen to highlight five provisions in the revised Rules; the first three are new changes, and the other two are codifications of prior stand-alone changes.

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Change Is Coming Fast (!)

By Matthew A. (Matt) Cordell

“The only constant in life is change.”  So wrote Heraclitus about 2,500 years ago on a papyrus roll using a stylus dipped in ink. Time has proven him correct.

Although change was a very real part of life during the era of Heraclitus, change in our lifetime is accelerating at an unprecedented pace. Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, observed that the pace of technological change in the microchip processor industry seemed to be doubling every year, and he predicted that the trend would continue. Now known as “Moore’s Law,” his statement is often applied more generally to all technology: It is said that the rate of technological change doubles yearly. Other aspects of life, including societal values and international commerce, are also changing with extraordinary speed.

While we all understand that the law typically lags behind technological and social changes, the law and the legal profession are nonetheless changing at an increasingly rapid pace. The sheer size and scope of law grows daily as regulatory agencies promulgate thousands of pages of new rules and guidance (80,260 pages published in the Federal Register alone in 2015, according to the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University) and hundreds of courts and agencies create new precedent. As the law becomes exponentially more complex and changes ever more rapidly, lawyers (and the growing industries that complement or compete with lawyers to provide legal services) must evolve … and they are.

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