Members In Focus – Melissa Duncan

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Members in Focus highlights NCBA members’ special talents and hobbies. Melissa Duncan is Director of Career & Student Development at Elon University School of Law.

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Ten Things You Young’uns Should Know Before Stepping Into a Civil Courtroom

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As I rock on my porch muttering while watching you kids in my front yard, I remember my dewy days as a green lawyer trying my first few auto accident trials. Having been fortunate to start as an associate in the warm embrace of Bailey & Dixon in the ’90s, I was given my own small auto accident cases to prepare and try along with tons of go-bys, outlines, checklists, briefs, forms, and trial notebooks that the firm had developed through decades of trial practice. The partners and senior associates freely shared their time and wisdom and assured me that if I put in the hours and followed their advice I would be as well-prepared as possible for my first trials.

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Backers See New Retention Election As A Step Toward Judicial Selection Reform

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By Amber Nimocks 

North Carolinians voting for a Supreme Court justice this November will see just one name on the ballot but they will still have a choice to make: Keep Associate Justice Robert H. Edmunds Jr., the sitting justice whose name will appear, or open the seat up for a replacement to be appointed by the governor.

Edmunds will be the first North Carolina Supreme Court justice to sit for a retention election under a new law passed last year. Proponents of the law hope it will deflate campaign spending levels in Supreme Court races, which have ballooned in recent years, and push the state toward a new system of judicial selection.

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