North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

Courts March 10, 2011

NCBA holds fourth annual 4ALL service day

Over 470 attorneys, law students and paralegals from across the state fielded telephone calls from the public on March 4, taking questions about everything from child custody to foreclosures to prisoner's rights. The event was the N.C. Bar Association's 4ALL Statewide Service Day, an annual event started four years ago by then-President Janet Ward Black. Call centers were staffed by volunteers in [...]

Courts March 4, 2011

Side Effects: Outcomes in other states indicate that med-mal bill would have marked impact on the business of law

The Texas Trial Lawyers Association used to attract anywhere from 250 to 350 people to its seminars on medical malpractice. That was before Texas enacted a cap on damages in med-mal cases. "This past year, we had 31 people show up," said Jay Harvey, past president of the association that represents plaintiffs' attorneys. The public-policy issues behind medical-malpractice reform are a matter of [...]

Courts March 3, 2011

Bar wants to know the race, age and gender of its members

Check your inbox. The N.C. State Bar wants to ask you a few questions. Next week, the State Bar will be sending out an anonymous survey to the state's 24,217 active lawyers to get a better grasp on the demographics of lawyers in the state, part of a push from the N.C. Bar Association and the N.C. Association of Women Attorneys. The voluntary survey asks participants three questions: Gender, birth [...]

Courts February 25, 2011

Lawsuit claims competitor copied firm’s site, slogan

The website for Raleigh's Kurtz & Blum is sleek and well-designed, complete with photos of the attorneys, easily navigable links and a slogan at the top designed to instill client confidence: "We're in your corner." In a lawsuit, Kurtz & Blum claims that The Wright Law Firm of Charlotte, and its principal, Roderick M. Wright Jr., copied its website design right down to the "We're in your c[...]

Courts February 25, 2011

From print to pixels, legal ethics struggle with new media

Not only does nearly every lawyer practicing have his own website, but potential clients are much more likely to plug "DWI lawyer" into a search engine than to look in the Yellow Pages. And as legal marketing has morphed into new arenas with ever-changing technology, there's some concern that regulatory agencies and state bars have not kept up. Ryan Blackledge (pictured), who serves on the N.C. Ba[...]

Courts February 25, 2011

Debate on medical-malpractice bill continues in Senate committee

By SYLVIA ADCOCK, Staff Writer [email protected] Acting on a controversial medical-malpractice bill, a Senate committee last week raised a proposed cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases from […]

Courts February 18, 2011

NCBA section takes on ‘arduous task’ of updating lien laws

With so many diverse and competing interests, it's been difficult to get a consensus on how to do something everyone agrees must be done: Change the state's lien laws. Nan E. Hannah (pictured), head of the N.C. Bar Association's Construction Law Section, said recent bankruptcy decisions, economic factors, concerns in the title industry and other issues led the section to "take a really hard look a[...]

Courts February 18, 2011

Med-mal bill would cap damages, increase threshold for ER claims

The state's legal landscape for medical-malpractice lawsuits would undergo a seismic shift and North Carolina would join 28 other states with caps on damages if a bill introduced last week becomes law. The bill, S. 33, is now being debated in the Senate's Judiciary I Committee. At a packed hearing before the committee Thursday, it attracted the attention not only of attorneys and doctors, but also[...]

Courts February 18, 2011

Bill would give appellate court appointees time to exhale

They're not calling it "Cressie's Law," but a bill introduced in the state House last week with bipartisan support is designed to prevent a Court of Appeals race from turning into a 13-way scramble as it did when Judge Cressie Thigpen (pictured) ran to retain his seat last fall. The bill, H. 99, would amend the N.C. Constitution so that appellate judges will "have adequate time to fulfill their ju[...]

Courts February 11, 2011

Fear of cuts leads to early departures from courts

In a pre-emptive move to soften the blow of expected budget cuts, the Administrative Office of the Courts implemented a voluntary reduction-in-force earlier this month, directing hiring managers - judges, clerks and district attorneys - to offer severance packages to employees who might benefit. Mary Beth Grady (pictured), civil division chief for the Wake County Clerk of Superior Court, is among [...]

Courts February 10, 2011

Case on Miranda warnings in schools goes to highest court

A case out of North Carolina about to go before the U.S. Supreme Court could set a precedent on whether a juvenile's age should be considered in a Miranda custody analysis. Marsha Levick (pictured), deputy director and chief counsel of the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Justice Center, said that although the question before the court is limited to age, her organization was also interested in the fact[...]

Courts February 4, 2011

Experts for hire: Womble Carlyle’s litigation support team is not just in-house

When Cris Windham arrived at Womble Carlyle 25 years ago, he got involved in the firm's tobacco litigation and quickly began to see the need for in-house medical experts. A litigation support team that included nurses and other experts to assist the firm's attorneys in developing medical defenses was assembled. Over the years, it grew. And grew. Today, Womble Carlyle's litigation support team is n[...]