Dear Members of the Workers’ Compensation Section:

It is my honor to serve as the chair of the Workers’ Compensation Section Council for the 2019-2020 bar year. My goals for our Section include building upon and continuing to develop the social/networking opportunities for the members and identifying a pro bono project for the members to support. Our Section has an outstanding group acting on your behalf as officers, Council members, and committee chairs. A full listing of the Council members and committee chairs can be found on the NCBA’s Workers’ Compensation Section webpage. Please feel free to reach out to any of the Council members, officers and/or me with any suggestions, questions, or concerns.

The Section Council held its first quarterly meeting on Friday, August 16th at the NC Bar Center in Cary. We have a lot of plans for the upcoming year, and I want to highlight some of those here.

First, in keeping with the goal of providing our members with more social and networking opportunities, Council members Kathleen Quinn DuBois and Julia Hooten, co-chairs of the Membership Committee, are working with other Section members to plan a social event in the Raleigh area for later this fall. Be on the lookout for more details. We hope you will be able to join us!

Additionally, with the leadership of Council members Jeanette Byrum and Sherman Criner, the Section will be hosting a CLE on December 4, 2019 at the NC Bar Center in Cary. The CLE will be a 6-hour program to provide the “basics of workers’ compensation.” This program will be beneficial to all the new attorneys beginning their workers’ compensation practices. It can also serve as a great opportunity to ensure more experienced members can meet the CLE requirements to become a board certified specialist in workers’ compensation. Speaking of CLE, our Section’s Annual Meeting and CLE will be held at the Grandover Resort & Conference Center on February 6-7, 2020. Council member Sarah Blair and Section member Cameron Simmons are in the process of planning this program as well. If you have any interest in presenting at either of these programs, please contact the planners to volunteer. Otherwise, we look forward to seeing you at one, or both, of these great programs!

Also, in case you have not already heard, the NCBA CLE Department is now offering an exclusive member benefit, the Member E-Library. Members can access a virtual collection of past CLE program manuscripts, including access to more than 32,000 pages of content on a wide variety of legal topics. This content can be accessed here, or by navigating to the E-Library from the Members tab on the NC Bar Association home page, www.ncbar.org.

Finally, I encourage all members to get involved in the work of our Section. You can volunteer to serve on one of our many committees by contacting me directly ([email protected]). Please also consider volunteering to write a post for the Section Blog. To do so you can contact the Communications Committee co-chairs, Kyla Block ([email protected]) and Stase Vonsiastsky ([email protected]).

The Council and I are looking forward to a great year!

Eleasa H. Allen
NCBA Workers’ Compensation Chair 2019-2020

September 16, 2019/by WorkersComp