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Join Us for the 2022 Health Law Section Annual CLE Program

Iain StaufferBy Iain Stauffer 

In addition to health care, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised many questions and issues for human resources and employment law. The NCBA Health Law Section’s Annual CLE Program will include a session involving “HR Gone WILD: Shots, Shouts, Shortages and More.” This session will incorporate a panel discussion including an in-house lawyer from a large health system along with private practitioners to analyze the pandemic’s impact on employment law, including mandatory vaccinations, exemption requests, employee shortages and burnout, and how shifting state and federal regulations have created a new landscape.

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Equal Justice Works Career Fair

Julia ZabinskyBy Julia Zabinski

The job search can be incredibly stressful, and it is easy to let this stress consume much of one’s mental capacity. One thing that I have learned in law school is that career fairs are a beautiful thing. Plenty of networking and job opportunities are all in one location. Moreover, career fairs are great spaces to practice many different skills from networking to interviewing and cover letter writing!

If you have the slightest interest in a career in public interest, I highly recommend checking out Equal Justice Works. Every year Equal Justice Works hosts a career fair where more than two hundred public interest employers come together and recruit. Before COVID-19, the career fair was in person. I did not have the luxury of attending the career fair in person, so I cannot speak to that specific experience. However, I have done Equal Justice Works two years in a row now and have thoroughly enjoyed the online experience. Even if you do not secure an internship or postgraduate job, the interview process with Equal Justice Works is great practice. Interviews are 20 minutes long and jumping from one Zoom call to the next with different employers tests many different skill sets. I highly recommend checking out the list of employers which is published every year prior to the event. There are employers who practice various kinds of law, and you can apply for any experience that interests you. There is no limit on the number of employers that you can apply to, so do not be afraid to put yourself out there.

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Pro Bono Spotlight: Rachel Royal

Rachel Royal

Rachel Royal

By Sarah Hill McIntyre

A North Carolina State Bar Certified Freelance Paralegal, Rachel Royal is the founder of Royal Touch Legal & Business Solutions. As a freelance paralegal, Rachel provides virtual paralegal services to personal injury, family law, and real estate firms while also serving as a Project Coordinator for the North Carolina Pro Bono Resource Center’s Driver’s License Restoration and Housing Stability Projects.

Despite her busy workload, Rachel is a leader in the North Carolina Bar Association, serving as the Secretary and Pro Bono Co-Chair for the Paralegal Division, the Co-Chair of the Survey Committee, and a member of the Awards Subcommittee of the Pro Bono Committee.

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Pro Bono Spotlight: Salim Uqdah

Salim Uqdah

Salim Uqdah

By Sidney Thomas

Salim Uqdah is a dedicated volunteer who is focused on educating and providing his dispute resolution skills to the people of North Carolina. Salim is a North Carolina Certified paralegal, Arkfeld E-Discovery Specialist, and NCDRC Certified Mediator with an immense talent for bringing people to the table. Salim left the Mecklenburg Courthouse in June 2018 to find innovative ways to help people during the most difficult times in their lives. In 2018, Salim opened the doors of Uroboros Mediations, a dispute resolution company specializing in mediation, arbitration, and divorce coaching. He has served as a collaborative neutral facilitator, divorce coach, and a securities arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

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Isolation

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The NCBA Professional Vitality Committee creates sourced articles centered on reducing inherent stress and enhancing vitality in the lives of legal professionals and offers those resources as a benefit for members of the North Carolina Bar Association.

By Michele Morris

In the morning, immediately upon waking, my mind screaming at me: “Get up. Get out of bed. You can do it. You can do this. Get up.” Not exactly high motivation. But I would indeed get up and sit in front of my computer, alone, in my apartment, drinking my first cup of coffee. I still had a small number of paying clients and an appellate brief due date looming. Even though writing it felt like pushing a rock up Mount Everest, I wrote.

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Ergo? What? My Aching Back

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The NCBA Professional Vitality Committee creates sourced articles centered on reducing inherent stress and enhancing vitality in the lives of legal professionals and offers those resources as a benefit for members of the North Carolina Bar Association.

By Theresa Joan Rosenberg

We lawyers are terrific listeners. But . . . do we listen to our bodies?

Many of us go into our respective offices – whether it’s in a spiffy office building, or, now, since last year’s initial COVID-19 “shutdown” – at the kitchen table, in a niche adjacent to a stairway, or the basement. Most of us log in to a computer and move forward with tasks of the day. How do you feel in your current workplace?

In 2021, a freelancing marketplace reported that about one-fourth of the American workforce will be remote. Two of five American respondents to a survey about working remotely since COVID-19 reported new or increased pain in back, shoulder and wrists.[ii] A digital health company found almost half of their surveyed workers had back and joint pain; almost three-quarters said the pain was new or worse.[iii]

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Join Us For The 2021 Health Law Section Annual CLE Program

Internal investigations have become larger and more complex, particularly in the health care industry, which presents unique risks of legal and regulatory pitfalls. The NCBA Health Law Section’s annual CLE program will include a presentation by Pearlynn Houck and Jonathan Krisko, who will discuss best practices in conducting health care-related internal investigations and the range of issues that may arise including privilege, document retention and preservation, confidentiality, employment-related complexities, and additional issues brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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April Expert Series CLE: ‘Entertainment Law and Coronavirus’

The April Expert Series CLE, “Entertainment Law and Coronavirus,” is available for viewing. The speakers included:

  • Timothy J. “Tim” Browne, Bass Berry & Sims PLC, Nashville, Tenn.
  • Melinda Morris Zanoni, Apollo Sports & Entertainment Law Group PLLC, Charlotte.

To access the CLE, click here.

In this CLE, Tim Browne and Melinda Zanoni discuss how COVID-19 has affected the practice of entertainment law, including challenges as content pivots to digital platforms, legal triage for counseling clients on how to operate in a lockdown, and COVID-defying solutions to pandemic problems faced by entertainment clients. Find out how to limit coronavirus liability at venues and discuss revisiting entertainment contract force majeure clauses in the era of COVID.

**Each month, the NCBA releases one-hour, on-demand CLEs, which are free of charge as the costs are included as part of your annual NCBA dues.

Letter to Adelaide

This piece was selected as a winning entry in the YLD’s 2021 Writing Competition.

By Cara N. Ludwig

Dear Daughter,

Today is your first birthday! In some ways, it was typical: a colorful cake and a few gifts you opened and then happily ignored while you played with the boxes. In other ways, it was not at all typical. There was no big gathering to share in your joy. No baptism at church. No trip to the park to celebrate with friends.

It was just us, at home, loving you within the confines of these four walls. As we have done day after day after day.

Your nursery is decorated with globes and maps and signs reminding you that “adventure is waiting for you, little one.” From the moment you were born, I have anticipated traveling the world with you, seeing each new experience through your precious eyes.

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An Interview With Attorney Jon Powell

By Jared Simmons

Attorney Jon Powell serves as the director of the Restorative Justice Clinic.

Jon Powell

The program receives referrals from the juvenile justice system, juvenile court, and Wake County schools and conducts victim impact and reentry circles in prisons and the community.

The goals of the project are to:

• Give juveniles the opportunity to take responsibility for and become accountable for their actions.

• Give victims the opportunity to learn about and be intimately involved in the outcome of their case.

• Give all parties the opportunity to create an agreement that will address and resolve the harm caused by criminal activity.

• Involve law students in the process of victim/offender mediation as active mediators.

Throughout this dialogue process, law students are involved as active co-mediators with trained law school faculty. This clinical experience provides valuable experience to law students in learning ways to approach and resolve problems which occur from criminal activity. Read more