Have you ever wondered how our CLE programs get their names?
“The Alimony Tour – Not Starring John Cleese” was the name of the 2015 Family Law Section Annual Meeting CLE in Asheville. Now, I’m a Monty Python fan, but a clever name like that can present some problems when you consider the life cycle of a typical North Carolina Bar Association Foundation CLE program. After the live program, we generally do video replays across the state, and those video replays count as live CLE credit. After the replays finish, the program is edited into sessions and uploaded to our On Demand catalog. When you view those sessions online from the convenience of your home or office, they count as online CLE credit.
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Over the last few weeks, Lawyers Mutual has received multiple reports of North Carolina attorneys who were targeted by scammers attempting to divert seller closing proceeds following real estate transactions. Unfortunately, several of these attacks were successful and hundreds of thousands of dollars were stolen and are very unlikely to be recovered.
I’ve asked our claims attorney, Troy Crawford, to talk with me about what went wrong and how to prevent it.
Troy: While the details of the recent scams are emerging, it appears hackers first became aware of the closing by compromising email accounts of differing parties. Sometimes the attorney account was compromised, sometimes the seller’s account was compromised but the most common scenario was the realtor’s account was being monitored by international criminal organizations.
The Young Lawyers Division recently held its 62nd Annual Meeting in connection with the NCBA Annual Meeting in Charlotte. As the ceremonial gavel was passed across the room from our former YLD chairs, including past NCBA presidents, our current president, and our president-elect, I thought about how the YLD has truly been a training ground for leaders of our profession and our state.
I then looked around the room at the remarkable young lawyers present. What an honor it is to serve alongside such an incredible group of people. The young lawyers who make up the YLD’s leadership team truly represent the best of our profession. They are smart, hardworking, selfless people who give their precious time and abundant talents, and together they are leading our more than 6,400 YLD members to achieve some remarkable things.
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Editor’s note: This is an updated version of the article that first appeared in the June 2016 edition of “The Litigator,” the NCBA Litigation Section newsletter. The article was updated Aug. 3, 2016.
When first established in 1995, the Business Court was touted as a way to make North Carolina’s “court system as responsive and predictable as the Delaware Chancery Court in dealing with complex corporate issues.” The Business Court has largely delivered on its promise of ease of use and predictability based, in part, on assignment of cases to a single (and highly qualified) Business Court judge and an e-filing system that practitioners could utilize from any jungle paradise (with wi-fi access). Practitioners must take heed, however. At the end of each Business Court case lurks a menacing tiger: North Carolina appellate practice and procedure!
Over the past two years, at least seven different appellate traps have emerged for North Carolina Business Court cases, many of which have resulted in dismissal of appeals. Those traps have been discussed extensively on our North Carolina Appellate Practice Blog (www.ncapb.com). This article summarizes several potential snares, with links to the detailed blog posts for those who seek more information about taming the beast.
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I am often called upon to answer questions related to pending appeals because I recently completed a clerkship at the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. When asked how long it will take the Court of Appeals to issue an opinion, I always say it is impossible to know with certainty, but the court has an internal policy of trying to issue opinions within 90 days of the date the appeal is scheduled for argument. After being involved in an appeal as an advocate, I decided to determine how long it takes the court to issue opinions.
First, I calculated the number of days it took the Court of Appeals to issue opinions in 2015 by counting the days from the date the appeal was scheduled for argument (regardless of whether oral argument was granted) until the date the opinion was issued. Not all appeals have an argument date. For example, some opinions are issued after the Supreme Court of North Carolina remands the case or after the Court of Appeals grants a party’s petition for rehearing. If the appeal was not argued, I treated the date that the appeal was remanded or the date the petition for rehearing was granted as the argument date.
Based on this methodology, I determined that the court issued opinions an average of 77 days after argument in 2015. The median was 62 days.
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Editor’s note: This article appeared originally in The Advocate, the newsletter of the NCBA’s Young Lawyers Division.
When The Advocate asked me to write an article about helpful tips for having an effective mediation, I took some time to reflect on how my personal preparation and tactics for mediation have changed over the last 20-some years. Civil litigation/mediation slowly but surely morphed from a passive “Well, let’s show up and see if we can settle at mediation” attitude, to an active “What do we need to do prior to mediation to secure a favorable settlement?”
Fundamentally, your client cares little about litigation drama. Your client cares about getting a good result that is cost effective and timely. Mediation can deliver all of that in spades. But, like almost anything in life, getting there takes some work and prior planning. Several hours of careful thought, strategy and planning about 60 days prior to a mediation will greatly increase the chances of having a successful mediation.
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Richard Gabriel, a member of the NCBA’s International Law & Practice Section and frequent participant in the attorney exchange program, reflects on the 2010 excursion to Turkey in light of the recent terrorist attack at the Istanbul Atatürk Airport.
The world seems different at night, in the absence of the brightness of the daytime. So it was, late at night, not resting, up to grab a book and turn on the TV, sound muted out of respect for those asleep. Then the vision on the tube, eerily familiar, not really sure, and the crawler at the bottom of the screen announces yet again, a bombing at an airport.
The panic on the screen, all too familiar scenes of turmoil, fear, hurriedly hit the sound button, and then the realization: I have been there before, the airport at Istanbul, Turkey.
Thoughts come in a flood: Alp, were you there at the time of the explosion, meeting another group of visitors and preparing to show them your country?
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When attending an out-of-state law school, the stress of job searching can make you wish you had the ability to click your heels three times to return home like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.” As a recent law school graduate and licensed North Carolina attorney, I can say that there are options and ways to ease the stress of job searching from an out state law school. After leaving North Carolina to attend law school in Virginia, I knew that I would need to be intentional with my job search if I wanted to return to North Carolina.
Job Search Options at an Out-of-State Law School
There are four major sources that can be utilized to help ease the stress of job searching from out of state.
Career Services Offices. OK, you got me. This is the easy answer. Yet, I was surprised at how many of my fellow classmates failed to utilize the Career Services office. I had several students tell me that they never set foot in the Career Services Office other than for required events. Do not waste a convenient valuable resource that is included in the price of tuition. Become familiar with your Career Services office and utilize their job bank. I applied to a large number of North Carolina state court clerkships through my Career Services office. Additionally, I found a large number of jobs posted by small firms looking for new attorneys in North Carolina. On a related note, most Careers Services offices have reciprocity agreements with other Career Services offices around the country. If you are not sure that your Career Services office has a reciprocity agreement with a law school in your home state, go ask. You can only improve your chances of getting a job by asking.
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Law school is a strange creature. You spend three long years sacrificing your sleep, your credit rating, your relationships, and your sanity. In return, you get the opportunity to take the bar exam and start a career where you get to challenge yourself every day, help countless people, and maybe even make a little money along the way. As you’ve (hopefully) learned, law school is all about filling your brain with points of law and forcing you to think your way around the gray areas. For all the substantive information you pick up during your time as a law student, however, there are some important things that get left along the wayside. As a recently licensed lawyer in North Carolina, I appreciate the opportunity to fill you in on a few things I didn’t learn until I made it out into the “real world.”
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Road Warriors is back and is celebrating its 15th anniversary with the new 24th edition. The column, a long-standing feature in the Workers’ Compensation Section newsletter, Course & Scope, focuses on lunch eateries around the state. This special anniversary and celebration of Road Warriors revving up its engines again is devoted to my all-time favorite, Ben Thanh Vietnamese Restaurant. All the tips and comments from our membership have made Road Warriors possible. Please email me at [email protected] with your favorite lunch stops and they may appear in following editions. If you take a moment to write a review, we’ll put it in the next edition if possible.
Ben Thanh Vietnamese Restaurant
1806 Windsor Square Drive
Matthews, NC 28105
(704) 566-1088
http://www.benthanhcharlottenc.com/
Ben Thanh has been a perennial favorite Asian restaurant in the Charlotte area for many years. And no wonder. The very best of Charlotte’s Vietnamese presence is on display at my all-time favorite restaurant. It’s like a journey through time to another era and to an exotic, mysterious tropical destination.
Ben Thanh’s family owned restaurant has its roots in the former Saigon of then South Vietnam. The culture and food are vastly different from the North, being a tropical region in the Mekong River Delta. The popularity of the flavorful, healthy food from this region has spread wildly around the world, with the beef and rice noodle soup phó having legions of followers.
Phó is seductively simple: rice noodles in an herbal/spiced broth, topped with various cuts of beef in different stages of doneness. When served, the patron garnishes the bowl with Thai basil, lettuce, bean sprouts and cilantro. Hot peppers are optional. Careful here, especially with the little red, nuclear tipped Thai chilies. Try Ben Thanh menu item No. 24 to have phó.
