About Nancy Henderson
Nancy Henderson is an award-winning journalist who has published hundreds of articles in Smithsonian, The New York Times, Parade, The Wall Street Journal and other publications. The author of Sewing Hope and Able! How One Company’s Extraordinary Workforce Changed the Way We Look at Disability Today, she enjoys breaking stereotypes and often writes about people who are making a difference through their work. Over the years, she’s enjoyed listening to family stories about her grandfather, who prosecuted cases as a solicitor general in North Carolina long before she was born.
Articles written by Nancy Henderson
The Surrogacy Route
Family law attorneys explain the basics of a complex processLast summer, 21 children—most of them under age 3 and born to different surrogates—were removed from their adoptive =parents’ home in Los Angeles amid abuse allegations. The news sent shock waves among those considering being a surrogate or hiring a surrogate to complete their families. “That story is unimaginable,” says Kelly McClure, a family law attorney at McClure Law Group in Dallas. “It really tainted a lot for people that need to have surrogacy.” Although surrogacy laws …
'Let's See What Happens'
Mountain States attorneys discuss what’s changed over the past two decadesChanges in law, in technology, even civility in the profession, can be challenging. But being forced to stay on your toes comes with its own rewards. “It’s fun for me because every day, I’m like, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen today. Let’s just see what happens,’” says Brian Steadman, an estate planning attorney at Solomon Dwiggins Freer & Steadman in Las Vegas. “It took me a few years of being regularly wrong to finally figure out that I’ve just got to be ready …
Overdue Process
Appellate attorney Liisa Speaker strives to keep family law judges in lineLiisa Speaker keeps the book that steered her toward law in a case outside her office door. She came across it nearly 40 years ago, while looking for a history fair project the summer before ninth grade: A “Scottsboro” Case in Mississippi: The Supreme Court and Brown v. Mississippi. The book chronicles the brutal police interrogation of three Black sharecroppers accused of murdering a white planter in 1934. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the trio’s coerced …
Filling Gaps
How to get quality representation when you don’t have the meansAfter years of applying for benefits and being repeatedly denied, a veteran turned to the UCLA Veterans Legal Clinic in Los Angeles, desperate for help. Reviewing his documents, executive director Jeanne Nishimoto and her team soon realized that the proof needed for approval was all there; it just needed to be assembled in the right way. “We were able to get that claim granted successfully, and that was really life-changing,” says Nishimoto, who helps veterans with, among other things, …
From the Ashes
Advice to prep for, and recover from, fires and other disastersLast year, from her office window in Malibu which overlooks Santa Monica Bay, Mary Craig Calkins watched as the Palisades fire burned in the distance. Authorities had already turned off the electricity as a public safety measure, so she had no access to local news reports. Her family’s house would be OK, she assumed, just like it was in 1993 when another blaze burned all but five homes. At sunset, however, powerful Santa Ana winds shifted the direction of the fire. “And we saw flames on the …
Keeping Them on Their Toes
When it comes to estate disputes, John Hartog has seen it allIt was past midnight, and John Hartog had been in the mediation for hours. A family of 15 beneficiaries was slogging through their deceased loved one’s business and money matters, and all that was left to discuss was the tangible personal property. This shouldn’t take long, thought Hartog, then in his first couple of years as a mediator in estate planning and probate cases. But then arose the question of who should inherit the decedent’s petrified whale penis. And the real fight …
Broker Between Two Worlds
Sonam Vachhani uses her prosecutorial—and people—skills in her family law practiceLike a lot of first-generation Americans, Sonam Vachhani was often called upon to translate complex information for her parents. “My entire life, I was taking something that was really confusing, really intimidating, and trying to make it accessible,” says Vachhani, whose parents came to the U.S. after emigrating from India to Canada in the 1980s. As an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, she had that same feeling of being “a broker between two worlds. … I found myself trying …
‘One More Day’
Roy Willey’s unprecedented verdict for a grieving mother who refused to give upLike most South Carolinians, Roy T. Willey IV learned about Brittanee Drexel from the billboards her mom (Dawn Conley) plastered along the coastal highway after the 17-year-old disappeared from Myrtle Beach during spring break in 2009. “Everybody knew that Brittanee Drexel was missing,” says Willey. “Brittanee’s picture was everywhere.” Over the years, few leads surfaced, but Conley refused to give up, even moving to Myrtle Beach and continuing to organize marches and vigils. Finally, …
Indefatigable
Dev Sethi relentlessly channels his own underdog experience to help plaintiff clientsIn the early 2000s, a south Arizona schoolteacher and Vietnam veteran was chaperoning schoolchildren in a 15-passenger Ford van when one of the vehicle’s Goodyear Load Range E tires suddenly failed, the driver lost control, and the vehicle rolled. The teacher’s right arm was ejected through the shattered-glass window and torn off near her shoulder. “Goodyear knew, but the public didn’t, that these tires were deadly,” says Dev Sethi, 53, now a litigator at Schmidt, Sethi & Akmajian …
From There to Here
Four attorneys on the ups and downs of practicing law for 20 yearsFor many rookie attorneys in New Orleans, the big concern in 2005 was landing a job after law school. Then came the storm of the century. “One cannot overstate the impact of Hurricane Katrina and the issues of the law that we were dealing with,” says Kristin Beckman, a commercial defense litigator at Pipes Miles Beckman. “I took the Bar in the Superdome a month before Katrina hit, and I didn’t even know if I was going to still have a job after that. And I was very lucky that I …
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