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
Intensity Personified
Robert Haar doesn’t talk for the sake of talkingIn 1985, third-year law student Steven Sullivan accepted an offer from St. Louis firm Kohn, Shands, Elbert, Gianoulakis & Giljum. Concurrently, the partners hired another young lawyer, Robert Haar, and they sent Sullivan a copy of his new colleague’s resume. Scanning it, Sullivan’s jaw dropped: Stanford University. Rhodes scholar. Yale Law School and editor of the Yale Law Journal. Law clerk for Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist. Sullivan didn’t get even to the part about …
The Girl Scout Murders
Garvin Isaacs on a career-turning case and clientIn 1977, when Garvin Isaacs and his co-counsel visited client Gene Leroy Hart in jail, the first words out of Hart’s mouth were: “I want you guys to know something—I didn’t kill those Girl Scouts.” That June, the bodies of three girls, ages 8, 9 and 10, were found on a trail approximately 150 yards from their tent at a summer camp near Locust Grove, Hart’s hometown. They had been raped, bludgeoned and strangled. Despite Hart’s criminal record—the Cherokee tribe member had …
'What Better Client to Have?'
Dan Webber spent his first seven years in the U.S. attorney’s officeOn the morning of April 19, 1995, Dan Webber, then a 29-year-old law clerk, was talking on the phone at the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City when a force suddenly broke through the wall, slamming him against his desk and sending shards of window glass into his skin. “I really thought it was a wrecking ball,” he says. “There was some construction actually going on a floor or two above us, so my instant thought was that something went crazy wrong.” Within a half-hour, he learned that a …
New York Business Closures: Public Health Laws To Know
In an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, state governments enacted various public health measures. On March 20, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his 10-point PAUSE plan “to assure uniform safety for everyone” during the coronavirus pandemic. Among other things, the policy: Closed all non-essential businesses statewide; Halted most in-person gatherings; and Stated that infected residents should not leave their homes except to receive healthcare, and then only after a telehealth …
Can You Sue If Someone Gives You COVID?
According to the American Bar Association, New York state residents have filed the most lawsuits related to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re getting cases every day like, ‘My boss forced me to work, and there were a lot of people sick, and I got it at work,’” says Cheryl Eisberg Moin, a personal injury litigator in New York City. “A lot of health workers, a lot of factory workers.” These lawsuits target companies, nursing homes and other entities accused of failing to protect workers …
By Subscription
How ByrdAdatto is replacing traditional billing with a Spotify-esque systemMichael Byrd and Bradford Adatto started trying to figure out a better way to serve their small-business clients while practicing at another Dallas firm in 2006. “Our common motivation was the belief that the hourly model is a broken model,” says Byrd. They went on to found ByrdAdatto, a 13-attorney business law firm primarily serving healthcare clients. “It’s particularly sensitive with our client base,” he says. “A surprise hourly bill in the mail hits them even harder than it …
Under Pressure
Why do attorneys struggle more than other professionals with mental health issues?The pressures of litigating personal injury cases while serving as a managing partner were silently taking their toll on Daniel Lukasik, but it wasn’t until 2000 that he noticed the first symptoms: fragmented sleep, trouble concentrating, and a deep sadness that brought tears at the most unexpected moments. “At that time, there was no one who talked about this topic,” says Lukasik, special projects coordinator at the New York State Office of Court Administration in Buffalo. “So I kept …
The Best Way To Start a Nonprofit
Nonprofit organizations provide a wide variety of important social services. But starting a nonprofit can be quite complicated, especially if you're unfamiliar with tax and corporation laws. In particular, nonprofit businesses need to understand how different state and federal laws affect their structure. States and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) highly regulate different types of nonprofit organizations. Failure to follow nonprofit compliance could result in severe tax penalties. Before …
The Art of Drafting Contracts: Why Clarity Matters
Business attorneys often find themselves helping clients remedy business contracts. “Sometimes a client can overlook the potential traps and pitfalls in a deal,” says litigator Darius Pakrooh. “That’s why it’s important to understand the power of unforeseeable events and get it 100 percent right the first time.” “If you don’t get it right, it could be unenforceable,” says employment attorney Tara Swartz. “So then you just don’t even have a contract even though you think …
Do I Need a Lawyer To Draft Contracts for My Business?
By the time a Detroit custom-home builder hired attorney Kenneth Neuman to sort out his troublesome contracts, “he was knee-deep in litigation, with one of his clients suing him left and right and for everything under the sun,” Neuman says. “There was no provision in this contract dealing with limitations on damages. Nothing provided for the waiver of a jury trial, let alone sending the parties to arbitration. And he didn’t have clear language in terms of when installments were due …
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