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
Illinois Cannabis Business: Laws To Know for Startups
The Illinois Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act, legalizing adult-use of recreational marijuana statewide, went into effect January 1, but cannabis attorney Bryna Dahlin has a word of caution for those considering opening a cannabis business: “Be prepared to expect the unexpected.” “This is an industry that is changing fast, day by day, week by week,” says Dahlin, a partner at Chicago’s Benesch Law. “So if you are someone that is more comfortable with certainties and with issues being …
Class in Court
Educating law students—and juries—sharpens Ed Walters’ courtroom skillsIn 1979, three years into his career, Edward J. Walters Jr. was serving as second chair in a lawsuit against a Baton Rouge utility company when senior partner Charles Moore allowed him to deliver the most crucial evidence in the case. Their 18-year-old client had sustained brain damage when the long-poled aluminum rake he was using to groove the pavement on Greenwell Springs Road accidentally touched a power line. His injuries included intention tremors that flared when he concentrated on even …
The A-Plus Team
James Waide is a liberal Vietnam vet, Rachel Waide is a Reagan-loving conservative; together, they are Mississippi's most dynamic legal coupleAs the air conditioning struggles to keep up with a 93-degree summer afternoon in Tupelo, 72-year-old Jim Waide and his wife and legal partner, Rachel Pierce Waide, 43, head into the conference room of their unimposing law firm. Jim wears khakis and a casual shirt, which goes with his laidback demeanor and a drawl so deeply Southern even folks from Dixie struggle to understand. Rachel is dressed in a crisp business suit, black hair perfectly styled and a beauty-queen-worthy smile lighting up …
Making Pigs Fly
When it comes to truck accident litigation, Morgan Adams takes the cases others pass byOn a shelf behind Morgan Adams’ desk, next to the tall can of Whoop Ass energy drink, sits a cobalt blue ceramic pig with wings he bought on the Arizona-Mexico border while researching a case involving a trucking accident. His client was a young woman whose family had been told she would never be compensated for her injuries, which included catastrophic brain injury. “That’s one of the things I’m proudest of,” says the Chattanooga attorney, pointing to the small, stout-bodied …
Righting Wrongs
The Choctaw Nation’s Michael Burrage makes opioid producers payBetween 2007 and 2017, 4,653 Oklahomans unintentionally died from prescribed opioids. According to the state, more overdose deaths in Oklahoma involve prescription opioids than all illicit-drug deaths combined. And the numbers are similar across the nation. In turn, many firms are suing opioid makers over accusations of creating widespread addiction. But Michael Burrage thinks his firm, Whitten Burrage, is working harder than the rest. And he has the receipts to prove it. “Our people are …
The Laws Dealing with Special Education in New York
Long before she became a special education attorney, Adrienne Arkontaky discovered firsthand how much effort it takes to advocate for a child with special needs. When her daughter Jordan, who is blind and has severe cognitive and physical disabilities, started school, Arkontaky took it upon herself to read up on federal and state regulations affecting her child. She scoured Jordan’s formal evaluations to make sure they were correct and networked with other parents. “I was lucky because I …
When Is a Contractor a Full-Time Employee?
The IRS estimates that U.S. business owners have misclassified millions of contract workers. Sometimes these misclassifications are in error, but often employers do so to avoid paying for overtime, health insurance, employment tax obligations, insurance coverage, and protection against on-the-job harassment and discrimination. A job title does not determine whether a position is contract work or full-time employment. States have different rules to determine employment classification. To find …
Instrument of Change
Benjamin L. Hall III believes in the power of the written word—and the pen that creates itFifty years ago, when Benjamin L. Hall III’s grandfather passed away, there was one item his grandson, then 14, really wanted to remember him by. “That was his fountain pen,” Hall says. It wasn’t an expensive pen; just a Sheaffer, a “poor person’s pen,” Hall says. Yet it meant the world. “He stressed being intellectually fit,” Hall says of his grandfather, who was the son of a slave. “He would always make this statement: ‘The brain is a trapped organ, and the only way it …
Caregiver
How Randy Papetti has freed innocent parentsIn 1998, four years after joining Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie in Phoenix, Randy Papetti was walking down the hallway when a frustrated criminal defense colleague approached him. He was repping a man serving 35-to-life after being convicted of killing an infant due to a medical diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, and asked Papetti to help write the brief. Despite Papetti’s lack of experience with the subject matter—“I knew nothing about it, so it was an enormous learning curve,” he …
Nice Being the Boss
“Pay your quarterly taxes” and other lessons from family law attorney Emily YuGrowing up in New Jersey, Emily Yu’s family expected her to become a doctor, an accountant or a lawyer. “I liked to argue,” she says. “So…” Her goal, however, wasn’t to climb the ladder at a large firm. The 34-year-old founder of Yu Family Law in Atlanta envisioned herself as an entrepreneur, partly because, she admits, “I do better calling the shots.” She concentrated on family law, first at Meriwether & Tharp in 2011, then a year later, at Hunter, Weinstein & …
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