< PreviousSeaga Gillard sat quietly at the defense table in a Wake County courtroom in January 2020 as his attorneys Edd K. Roberts and Jonathan Broun prepared for the first day of jury selection. Gillard was charged with first-degree murder in the 2016 brutal deaths of April Lynn Holland, who was pregnant, and Dwayne Garvey. Both were gunned down in a room at the Crabtree Valley Best Value Inn. Gillard was found guilty, and a Wake County jury unanimously recommended of murder the death penalty. Broun, who is senior attorney with the North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services (NCPLS), had been assigned as co- counsel by the Capital Defender after the district attorney offered aggravating factors and declared it a death penalty case. “I’ve handled a dozen murder cases, but this was my first death penalty case,” said Roberts. “Jonathan has considerable experience with death penalty cases. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to these cases where the state is attempting to take an individual’s life. “There are two phases in a death penalty case,” Roberts continued. “First, the jury must determine if the suspect was guilty or not guilty. In the second phase, or sentencing phase, we are trying to convince the jury that our client’s life has value, and they should not be put to death. “What becomes really critical in a capital” case is mitigation; finding out the entire life story of the defendant to determine what humanizing characteristics may impact the jury to give a life sentence versus a death sentence.” North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services JESSICA GARCIA, EDD K. ROBERTS, SEAGA GILLARD AND JONATHAN BROUN IN WAKE COUNTY COURTROOM, JANUARY 2020 | PHOTO BY BOB FRIEDMAN FIGHTING SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS ONE CLIENT AT A TIME BY BOB FRIEDMAN ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · NORTH CAROLINA TRIANGLE VOL. 8 NO. 3 20“The United State Supreme Court has made it very clear that when deciding whether to sentence somebody to death, we don’t just look at the crime; we don’t just look at one day in the person’s life,” said Broun. “We look at their entire history, and who they are, their background, how this happened. That’s where my experience comes in.” Broun and a mitigation specialist appointed by the N.C. Office of Indigent Defense Services went to St. Lucia, where Gillard grew up. They talked to his teachers, family and neighbors. “This kid grew up in the streets, without a dad and his mom had to struggle to raise him and his brothers and sisters. It was a poverty situation where he was left to be raised by the streets,” said Roberts. FOCUS ON CUTTING EDGE ISSUES Jonathan Broun has been doing capital cases since 1994. Over the last four years, he has had four first-degree murder trials before Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway. Three of them were capital cases. “In two cases which I tried in front of Judge Ridgeway, we were able to secure a life sentence: Nate Holden in 2017 and Travioin Smith in 2016,” said Broun. “Also, along with Beth McNeill of NCPLS, we represented James Blackmon last year who was found innocent by a three-judge panel and released after serving over 35 years for a murder he did not commit.” “What every judge wants, and every citizen should expect is that justice and truth prevail in our courtrooms,” said Judge Ridgeway. “The best way to ensure that is to have people like the North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services involved in some of our tougher cases. They have the ability to focus on cutting edge or emerging issues in the justice system. There may be new or nuances in constitutional rights that are created by the U.S. Supreme Court or the North Carolina Supreme Court.” HUNDREDS OF LETTERS EVERY WEEK “NCPLS is a private, non-profit law firm that exists to provide people incarcerated by the State of North Carolina with their constitutionally required meaningful access to the courts,” said Mary Pollard, the recently appointed executive director of the North Carolina Office of Indigent Defense Services (NCIDS). NCPLS contracts with the NCIDS to provide inmates incarcerated in the North Carolina Division of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice with their constitutional right of meaningful access to the courts. The NCPLS has an annual budget of around $3 million, about 90 percent of which comes from the NCDIS contract. It has 16 attorneys and a total staff of around 30 people. About 75% of NCPLS’s work is on post-conviction cases. “We get hundreds of letters every week,” said Pollard. “Each and every letter from an incarcerated person concerned about the legality of their conviction or sentence results in a case evaluation by an attorney, and if the person has a viable claim for relief, our attorneys will offer to represent the person in a Motion for Appropriate Relief.” Every letter is answered whether their case is accepted or not. “Incarcerated people who write with concerns about conditions of confinement are offered advice and resources advising them about how to advocate on their own behalf, and our attorneys may offer representation in matters that involve serious violations of a constitutional right,” said Pollard. “Because of the complications of sentence calculations under Structured Sentencing and because of the convoluted processes involved in calculating and applying jail credit, NCPLS more than pays for itself every year by correcting improperly calculated sentences and ensuring that the Division of Adult Correction is not spending tax dollars to incarcerate people beyond their lawful release date,” said Pollard. “By assisting one client at a time, I fight the systematic problems of the death penalty like in the Gillard case and the criminal justice system in general,” said Broun. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE NORTH CAROLINA PRISONER LEGAL SERVICES GO TO WWW.NCPLS.ORG. MARY POLLARD JUDGE PAUL RIDGEWAY JONATHAN BROUN EDD K. ROBERTS AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 21Having to tell prospective clients that they do not have a case is never an enjoyable experience. It has been one of the continuous, dis- appointing aspects of being a plain- tiff’s employment lawyer in North Carolina to have to tell members of the LGBTQ+ community that the law may not protect them. On June 15, 2020, a United States Supreme Court ruling changed that. In a 6-3 decision, Bostock v. Clay- ton County, a Gorsuch-lead majority held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual preference and gender identity. Bostock arose from three consolidated cases. A county employee in Clayton County, Georgia was fired after his employer learned he was gay. The Eleventh Circuit held that Title VII does not cover sexual orientation. The Second Circuit came out the other way on a case involving a skydiving instructor who was fired after the company learned that he was gay. In the third case, the Sixth Circuit held that Title VII protects discrimi- nation against transgender individu- als when an employee was fired after she told her employer that she would transition to living as a woman. The road to Bostock was long, and the fight for many is still not over. These cases helped pave the way: In Oncale v Sundowner Offshore Services, (1998), the Supreme Court unanimously held that Title VII pro- tections against workplace discrimi- nation applied to harassment between members of the same sex. Next, in Lawrence v Texas (2003), the Court held that laws prohibiting homosex- ual activity violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Jus- tice Kennedy, for the majority, wrote “Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct with- out intervention of the government.” Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) proved to be a watershed moment for LG- BTQ+ rights. In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that denying marriage to same sex-couples violated the Due Process Clause. Writing that same-sex couples only sought “equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” Justice Kennedy stated that marriage was a funda- mental touchstone of our society that should not be denied to same-sex couples. IMPACT OF BOSTOCK In Bostock, Justice Gorsuch—a for- mer Kennedy clerk—wrote for the majority that it was impossible to discriminate against a person on the basis of sexual orientation or identity without discriminating against that individual “because of...sex,” the op- erative statutory language. The Court also endorsed a “but- for” causation test, noting that “if the employer relies in part on an indi- vidual employee’s sex when deciding to discharge the employee-put differ- ently, if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer-a statutory violation has occurred.” Bostock also cut off the “group de- fense” argument, noting that Title VII protects and focuses on individuals rather than groups: “it doesn’t mat- ter if the employer treated women as a group the same when compared to men as a group.” In other words, an employer who fires a woman for be- ing insufficiently female and a man for being insufficiently masculine cannot argue that it treats women the same as men and therefore can fire an individual stating it treats all the same. Either way, the employer fires the individual because of sex. CONCLUSION While Bostock is a landmark victory for LGBTQ+ advocates, there are still large gaps in the protection of indi- viduals. For example, Title VII pro- tections do not cover businesses with less than 15 employees—leaving a large portion of employees across the nation without protection. Moreover, the Court declined to address the impact of this holding on bathroom access for transgender employees. Also, the expansion of the ministerial exception in two of the Court’s other rulings this term means many em- ployees of religious organizations will not benefit from the ruling in Bos- tock. Finally, there remains an open question on how this ruling impacts the N.C. Equal Employment Practices Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. Based on our experience with em- ployment issues, a client who believes they were fired on the basis of sexual preference or gender identity could be entitled to damages including lost wages, lost benefits, emotional dis- tress, court and legal fees as well as punitive damages. Impact of SCOTUS Ruling On Sexual Preference and Gender Identity Discrimination MICHAEL KORNBLUTH AND JOSEPH HJELT | Employment Law The Managing Partner at Kornbluth Ginsberg Law Group in Durham, Michael A. Kornbluth handles cases of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and execu- tive severance agreements. Kornbluth is a former chair of the North Carolina Bar Association’s labor and employment law section and the North Carolina Advocates for Justice’s employment law section. Joseph Hjelt is an associate attorney at Kornbluth Ginsberg Law Group. He handles employment matters, including sexual harassment, disability, and discrimination claims on behalf of employees. Hjelt currently serves on the board of the NCAJ’s employment law section. For questions about LGBTQ+ and other employment issues, contact: 919-401-4100 or www.kglawnc.com. MICHAEL KORNBLUTHJOSEPH HJELT AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 23If you’re anything like most law firm owners, you had a rude awakening moment. Maybe it was after an 80-hour week. Maybe it was after a disgruntled employee quit and you realized you had no new cases on the calendar. Or maybe, a pandemic hit and you realized you had no plan. No plan to pivot your client services. No plan to go virtual. No means of making a quick change to your operations so you could keep the cash coming in. No automated marketing to generate leads. Whatever the catalyst, there likely came a moment when you realized that law school didn’t teach you anything about running a business! Yes, you know all the practical things about defending your clients, about protecting their rights, about the laws that govern this country. In fact, you might be one of the smartest people you know! But if you leap into entrepreneurship without learning a little something about business management, you’re in trouble. 5 MAJOR ERRORS I have worked with thousands of small law firms in all practice areas and from all over the country. I can tell you that typically there are 5 major errors I see being made when I finally sit down with a lawyer who is staring at a dire P and L statement and teach them how to reboot their system so they can finally score big. 5 Reasons Small Law Firms Go Broke BY RJON ROBINS ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · NORTH CAROLINA TRIANGLE VOL. 8 NO. 3 241. THEY DON’T HAVE GOALS AND DON’T TRACK THEIR NUMBERS. How can you get where you want to go if you have no idea what’s going on? You can’t manage what you don’t measure and you can’t measure what you haven’t defined. Set solid financial goals, and track them. Know what you’re spending on marketing, on office rental, on paper. Everything. Getting a handle on what you’re spending or need to spend will give you a better idea of what you need to bring in to make a profit. No it’s not always comfortable and you may be shocked at what you find out about your own business, but it’s at that point that you can start turning it around before it becomes a giant mess that you can’t crawl out of. Maturity in entrepreneurship requires a willingness to get real with yourself! 2. THEY FAIL TO CONSIDER PERSONAL ECOLOGY. How are you interacting with your environment? Are you in alignment with your goals? Are you balancing work and play? Freedom is not one-dimensional, so you have to know if the way you are working can actually support the life you want, the amount of time you want to spend with your family and the kind of car you want to drive. Not the one that “makes sense.” The one that lights you up and makes your spouse nervous! I see a lot of lawyers who are tolerating conditions they would NEVER advise a client to tolerate. You started your own law firm to feel free. How free do you feel? 3. THEY ARE CONTROL FREAKS. Good grief. Delegate already! Are you the boss or what? If you don’t hire staff, and I don’t mean your cousin who is out of work, then you won’t be able to loosen your grip and you will burn out. You’ll continue to be stressed out and overwhelmed, trying to do ALL the jobs. What did you go to law school for? To set appointments? Vacuum the office? Build your website? No. If you want your own law practice, then you need to put the right people in the right places so you can focus on YOUR zone of genius: the law. 4. THEY DON’T HAVE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES IN PLACE. I recommend doing this before you hire someone. If you don’t, then when it’s time to deal with an employee issue, employee onboarding or accounts receivable, you won’t have a structure in place that provides a solution. 2020 showed us how important policies and procedures are. How much easier would it have been to pivot to a virtual model if all of your employees knew EXACTLY what was expected of them in writing!? Policies and procedures protect you and they make the business of managing a law firm a LOT easier. 5. THEY FORGET THAT THEIR NUMBER TWO JOB IS PROVIDING LEGAL SER- VICES. But I thought . . .? Nope! When you have your own practice, your number one job isn’t providing legal services, it’s SELLING legal services. If you don’t have your law firm set up like a real business yet, you’ll have a tough time seeing consistent growth. Systems set you up for freedom. So you’ve got to put automated marketing systems in place that allow you to generate leads on autopilot, even on weekends, even when you’re on vacation. Remember selling is a service. You are in the business of solving problems and helping people. You can’t help anyone if you don’t let them know you exist. So your number one job is marketing so that you can do your number two job of being the lawyer they need! I hope what you’ll take away from this article is the fact that the 5 main reasons law firm owners go broke are actually 5 very simple things to fix. You’ve just got to have a plan in place that supports the exact kind of firm you want to run and the exact kind of life you want to live. Without a plan, you’ll be winging it. You’ll probably work more hours than you want to work for less money than you want to make. That’s not freedom. And freedom is why you did this in the first place right? RJON ROBINS FOUNDED HOW TO MANAGE A SMALL LAW FIRM IN 2008. TODAY HOW TO MAN- AGE A SMALL LAW FIRM HAS GROWN TO BE THE LARGEST PROVIDER OF OUTSIDE C-SUITE SERVIC- ES FOR SMALL LAW FIRMS AND HAS BEEN NAMED BY THE INC. 5000 ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING COMPANIES IN THE U.S. FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS IN A ROW. Remember selling is a service. You are in the business of solving problems and helping people. You can’t help anyone if you don’t let them know you exist.” AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 25 C. Mark Holt of Ra- leigh has been installed as the 126th president of the North Caro- lina Bar Association. Holt will also serve in 2020-21 as president of the North Carolina Bar Foundation. The ceremony took place during the NCBA Annual Meeting in June at the N.C. Bar Center in Cary. The annual meeting was conducted with limited in-person attendance and webcast statewide to NCBA members due to COVID-19. Holt is a partner in Holt Sherlin LLP, which he co-founded in 2013 with David Sherlin, immediate past president of the Wake County Bar Association. Jon Heyl of Charlotte is the new president- elect of the North Car- olina Bar Association. He was elected in June Friday, during the 2020 NCBA Annual Meeting at the N.C. Bar Center in Cary. Heyl will be installed as the 127th president of the NCBA next June at the 2021 Annual Meeting, and will also serve in 2021-22 as president of the North Carolina Bar Foundation. Parker Poe attorney Catharine Biggs Arro- wood, is the 12th recip- ient of The Advocate’s Award and the first to receive the award vir- tually via a Zoom pre- sentation in June. The Advocate’s Award is presented by the North Carolina Bar Association’s Litigation Section as merited to rec- ognize members who are the “super- stars” of the Bar. Campbell Univer- sity’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law Dean J. Rich Leonard has been awarded the prestigious designation of a Fulbright Specialist Scholar for a three-year period. The Fulbright Specialist Program, part of the larger Fulbright Program, was es- tablished in 2001 by the U.S. Depart- ment of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). Gray Wilson has joined Manning, Ful- ton & Skinner, P.A’s complex litigation practice. Wilson has in-depth experience re- solving a host of com- plex civil litigation mat- ters and commercial disputes, as well as considerable expertise advising on litigation-related issues for transac- tional clients and matters. Manning, Fulton & Skinner, P.A. an- nounced the addition of Chuck Munn as an attorney in the corpo- rate law practice. The former General Coun- sel at PRA Health Sci- ences, Inc. and Divi Hotels and Re- sorts, and former Assistant General Counsel at Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC, Munn comes to Manning Fulton with more than three decades of experience in corporate, life sciences, mergers and acquisi- tions, securities and financial disclo- sures, and data privacy and protection law. Jeffery J. Goebel has joined Raleigh- based Shanahan Law Group, PLLC. Goe- bel’s practice areas in- clude commercial real estate, landlord/ten- ant disputes, banking, finance, Small Business Administration loans, col- lections creditor representation and neighborhood associations. Cranfill Sumner & Hartzog LLP (CSH Law) announce d that Zac Bolitho has joined the firm’s Ra- leigh office as Of Coun- sel in its white collar & criminal defense group. He will rep- resent clients in white collar criminal investigations and prosecutions, as well as complex civil and regulatory litigation. N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall has been selected to receive the Chief Jus- tice I. Beverly Lake Jr. Public Service Award from the North Caro- lina Bar Association. She is the first woman to receive the award. Mar- shall has served as Secretary of State since 1997. This award honors an ex- ceptional lawyer practicing in North Carolina who has contributed to the community with exemplary public service. AWARDS ANNOUNCEMENTS PRESS RELEASES EVENTS PROMOTIONS ACTIVITES HONORS RECOGNITIONS TALK TOWN of the SUBMIT PRESS RELEASES FOR NEXT MONTH’S TALK OF THE TOWN AT WWW.ATTORNEYATLAWMAGAZINE.COM/SUBMIT-TOT/ C. Mark Holt Dean J. Rich Leonard Jeff Goebel Zac Bolitho Elaine Marshall Gray Wilson Chuck Munn, Jr. Jon Heyl Catharine Arrowood ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · NORTH CAROLINA TRIANGLE VOL. 8 NO. 3 26 Robert Ingram has been selected to receive the John G. Medlin Jr. Award, which rec- ognizes contributions to the administration of justice and judicial independence by a North Carolina citizen who is not a lawyer. The award was established in 2012 by the NCBA Board of Governors in memory of the longtime president and CEO of Wachovia who served as chair of the Commission for the Future of Justice and the Courts in North Carolina. Ingram, who now serves as general partner with Hatteras Venture Part- ners of Durham, co-led the merger and integration of GlaxoSmithKline while serving as Chairman and CEO of Glaxo Wellcome. Linda Stephens has been named as the 2020 recipient of the NCBA’s H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award. Ste- phens was nominated by the Professionalism Committee and affirmed by the NCBA Board of Governors. Stephens is of counsel at Hedrick Gardner Kincheloe & Ga- rofalo LLP and served on the North Carolina Court of Appeals from 2006-16. The award is given in honor of Judge McKnight, who served on the U.S. District Court for the West- ern District of North Carolina. Ava Britt Lynch has joined Ra- leigh personal injury plaintiffs’ firm, Thorp Law. Lynch is a 2016 gradu- ate of Campbell University’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law. She has worked with the Restorative Justice Clinic and in- terned with the Office of the Public Defender for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Wake County District Attorney’s Office, and Wake County Public Defender’s Office. Ann Groninger, a founding partner of the North Carolina- based firm Johnson & Groninger, PLLC, has been accepted into the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). ABO- TA dedicates itself to the preserva- tion and promotion of the Seventh Amendment, which guarantees the right to civil jury trials. Members in this prestigious invitation-only group must have tried a minimum of 10 civil jury trials to conclusion. More than 7,600 lawyers and judges are involved in ABOTA chapters in all 50 states. Cranfill Sumner & Hartzog LLP (CSH Law) announced that Laura Dean has been promoted to the po- sition of Of Counsel. Dean is based in the firm’s Raleigh office. Dean is a civil litigator who focuses her practice in professional liability defense, gen- eral business disputes, premise and products liability cases and admiralty and maritime matters. She practices in both the Federal and State courts across North Carolina. In addition, she is admitted to practice in New York and New Jersey state courts. The Estate Planning and Fiduciary Law Sec- tion of the North Caro- lina Bar Association re- cently presented Rudy L. Ogburn with the Third Annual Distin- guished Service Award. The award recognizes and honors the distin- guished service of a Section member whose expertise, character, knowl- edge of fiduciary law, commitment to the Section, the North Carolina Bar Association, the North Carolina State Bar, and the general public, have made a significant impact for better- ment of legal practice in the area of estate planning and fiduciary law. Sarah Privette joined divorce law firm Marshall & Taylor, PLLC in May. She will focus her practice on family law including, custody, child support, alimony, post separation support, do- mestic violence and equitable distri- bution. Holly King has joined Marshall & Taylor, PLLC. King focuses her practice exclusively on family law, and has experience representing clients in a wide variety of complex family law matters, including divorce and sepa- ration, child support, child custody, alimony, property division, and do- mestic violence. AWARDS ANNOUNCEMENTS PRESS RELEASES EVENTS PROMOTIONS ACTIVITES HONORS RECOGNITIONS SUBMIT PRESS RELEASES FOR NEXT MONTH’S TALK OF THE TOWN AT RFRIEDMAN@ATTORNEYATLAWMAGAZINE.COM Awards • Announcements • Press Releases • Promotions Events • Activities • Honors • Recognitions Linda Stephens Ann Groninger Sarah Privette. Holly King Laura Dean Rudy Ogburn Ava Britt LynchRobert A. Ingram AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 27 Tom Kelly has joined Nich- ols, Choi & Lee, PLLC as an associate in their office in Ra- leigh. He will focus his practice on civil litigation and health- care regulatory law. Melanie Pfeifer has joined The Daphne Edwards Divorce & Family Law Firm as an as- sociate attorney. Pfeifer focuses her practice on issues impact- ing families, their marriages, and their children. NC Chief Justice Cheri Bea- sley has appointed District Court Judge Debra S. Sasser as chief district court judge for the Tenth Judicial District (Wake County). Judge Sasser will suc- ceed Chief District Court Judge Robert B. Rader upon his retirement on Au- gust 31, 2020. AWARDS ANNOUNCEMENTS PRESS RELEASES EVENTS PROMOTIONS ACTIVITES HONORS RECOGNITIONS DID YOU KNOW THERE IS NO COST TO RUN YOUR LAW FIRM’S NEWS? SUBMIT PRESS RELEASES FOR NEXT MONTH’S TALK OF THE TOWN AT RFRIEDMAN@ATTORNEYATLAWMAGAZINE.COM Awards • Announcements • Press Releases • Promotions Events • Activities • Honors • Recognitions • New Hires • Honors & Awards • Board Appointments • Association Elections • Promotions • New Office Locations • Mergers & Acquisitions • Speaking Engagements TALK TOWN of the CRAIG PETRONELLA IT Cybersecurity and NIST Compliance Expert GIVE US $500 AND YOUR PERMISSION AND WE’LL HACK YOU BEFORE THEY DO. GUARANTEED. Security Risk Assessments & Penetration Testing, Giving You the Peace of Mind Knowing Your Network Security is Safe. 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