Welcome to a New Bar Year!
By Dear Family Law Section Members,
First and most importantly, thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve as Chair of the Family Law Section for the 2024-2025 bar year. I’m honored to be entrusted with this important work. This year, I’m looking forward to continuing down the roads that so many respected colleagues have paved before me, as well as trying some new things. I know that change is hard, and I’m grateful to each and every one of you for taking this ride with me.
So, in the vein of trying something new, I’m going to be vulnerable with you for a second, and just get right to it.
First, I don’t know everything. I practice family law, but only family formation law – which has mainly to do with assisted reproduction and adoption. In this way, my clients, although often experiencing considerable trauma and grief related to infertility, are not usually embroiled in adversarial conflict. I practiced divorce-related law for many years before transitioning to my current practice, so I have lived experience and empathy for the work that you all do and the toll that it takes. But the fact that my current practice is somewhat different than most of yours will mean that I may have some knowledge gaps about substantive aspects of divorce-related family law. So I’m asking for your patience and your help. I am open to learning from you, and I am comfortable being wrong. When I’m wrong, I hope that you will work with me to help me learn and grow.
Second, I struggle with managing stress, maintaining a work-life balance, disconnecting from my devices, leading a law firm, and running a business. I vomited before every trial for my first two years of practice. During my first divorce case ever, the judge forced me to read aloud from a statute book in front of a courtroom full of people and colleagues and then proceeded to throw me out of the courtroom (for Wake County folks, you can ask me what judge it was, but I suspect you already know). I have suffered for the work that we do – trauma from years of being yelled at by clients, by opposing counsels, by judges just for trying to do my job, existential frustration from every trial in which I gave everything, only to have it end with a maddeningly, tragically unjust or just flat-out bizarre decision and emotional exhaustion from shepherding client after client through the worst thing that has ever happened to them. I know I’m not the only person who has experienced these things and who carries them still. I also know that sometimes it’s nice to hear that other people are going through it too. So, I’m putting it out there. Being a family lawyer, but also a fully three-dimensional human being (spouse, parent, friend, colleague, business partner, etc.) is hard. I’m asking you, in advance, to accept me as flawed. But please also know that I (like you) am trying my best. I need your support, and I am offering my support in return.
In terms of my vision for this upcoming year, I see our section as a growing and dynamic group of attorneys but also as a community of human beings. I am committed to working to ensure that all voices are heard and that each member has an opportunity to contribute. I named my law firm “Village Law Group” because I believe in the concept of the village – a place where people can connect, help and support each other, a place of collaboration and cooperation, a place of acceptance and belonging. I hope to bring that mindset to our village of family law attorneys across North Carolina. So, with that in mind, here are my goals for the 2024-2025 year.
1) Improve wellness amongst our membership.
We are often so focused on the needs of our clients that we neglect our health and well-being, and that of our colleagues and teammates. The intense emotional and intellectual demands of family law can lead to significant stress, burnout, and mental health challenges. It is time that we acknowledge and address these issues head-on, fostering a culture that supports the well-being of every attorney in our community. In the next month or so, I will provide a follow-up post that details the Family Law Attorney Wellness (FLAW) initiative that we are striving to implement this year.
2) Provide resources for leadership training and career development.
For many of us, the “pinnacle” of our careers, and the position for which we strive, is that of an owner, partner, or leader of a firm, office, or organization. For some solo practitioners and owners of small firms, business ownership occurs soon after law school ends. In our three years of law school, despite much focus on stimulating cases like Blackacre (1853), we are taught to strive to own a law firm but are provided precious little training on how to actually do it. As such, a goal for this year is to establish a library of training materials and live resources on concepts like leadership, intergenerational communication, problem-solving, business fundamentals, and team management. We hope that this library will grow over time so that family law attorneys who become leaders (whether three years out of law school or 30 years out of law school) have access to training and resources to help them succeed.
3) Integrate DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) as a core value within the Family Law Section and establish a DEI Committee.
This year, we will be asking the Family Law Section to focus on and support diversity, equity, and inclusion as a community value. Part of that “ask” will be the establishment of a DEI Committee. The mission of this committee will be to foster a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the family law community in North Carolina, and to ensure that all family law attorneys feel included, respected, and supported by the Family Law Section and the NCBA. Many other sections within the NCBA already have DEI Committees, and the director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the NCBA is excited to support us in joining our colleagues in other areas of the law who have prioritized ensuring that all members can contribute and lend their voices to the practice of law in North Carolina.
4) Support the continued progress of the projects of the section – including the Uniform Parentage Act and others.
The Family Law Council voted to put forth a proposed version of the Uniform Parentage Act for North Carolina at our last meeting in May 2024. So a focus of the upcoming year will be to continue to support the progress of the UPA bill through the NCBA legislative process. We will also continue to collaborate on and support the current projects of the section as well as any new initiatives that are important to our committees and community members.
Our Family Law Section Council Meetings will take place on the following dates:
September 12, 2024 – Greensboro, NC
November 6, 2024 – The Bar Center
January 24, 2025 – Charlotte, NC
March 13, 2025 – The Bar Center
May 1, 2025 – Charleston, SC
Thank you to all those who read through this long post! Thank you to my team of co-leaders, officers, council members, and NCBA staff members, and thank you to all those who led before me. I’m excited to embrace the opportunity to grow with all of you.
Please feel free to reach out and introduce yourself if you don’t know me already. I can be found at [email protected].