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
Last Gladiator Standing
Civil rights and employment attorney Deborah L. Gordon gets in the pitDeborah L. Gordon doesn’t remember every detail of her first discrimination hearing 40 years ago. At the time, she was a fresh-out-of-law-school assistant in the civil rights and civil liberties division of the Michigan attorney general’s office. But she distinctly recalls the administrative law judge’s point-blank declaration about her goal to become a litigator: “Women will never be able to get into the pit to fight things out.” Her reply? “You are so wrong.” Then Gordon won the …
Convicted Until Proven Innocent
California Western School of Law’s Innocence Project tries to ‘put Humpty Dumpty back together’ to free the wrongfully imprisonedJustin Brooks was working as a law professor in Michigan 20 years ago when he read about a young woman sentenced to death in a plea bargain in a murder case. Baffled, he met with the inmate, who said her lawyer had advised her that taking the plea would save her life. She also insisted she was innocent. “I was teaching a criminal law class and told my students, ‘There’s a 21-year-old on death row in Illinois who says she’s innocent. Who wants to help me out?’” recalls Brooks, 49. …
Steady She Is
Marlene Eskind Moses guides clients through the toughest family law strugglesWhen Marlene Eskind Moses saw her client struggling—the woman was fighting drug addiction and was devastated after losing custody of her child—her social work background kicked into high gear. Fueled by a desire to give the young mother more than just legal advice, Moses helped her get treatment at a rehabilitation center, work on a parenting plan and secure a joint custody agreement with her ex-husband. “She’s doing great,” says Moses, 63, founding manager of MTR Family Law in …
Appeal to Adventure
Susan Ford Robertson attacks appellate cases with the same intensity she honed as a competitive cyclistPedaling through South Dakota during a summer after graduating from college, Susan Ford Robertson and her biking buddies kept spotting signs for Wall Drug Store, a celebrated tourist oddity at the edge of Badlands National Park. But the folksy mall was a good 50 miles away, and it wasn’t on the planned route. Undeterred, the cyclists followed their whim and detoured in search of the billboard attraction. But as the day grew longer, the winds harsher and the sun more blistering, Robertson …
Calm in the Storm
Family law attorney Nancy Cross keeps her cool when others don’tSome attorneys would have considered the client a lost cause. The woman—who had been married for 30 years, raised four children and worked alongside her husband—had been left with “virtually nothing” from a large marital estate after her divorce. That nagged at Nancy Cross, herself a divorced mother of two. “I said to her, ‘What the heck. We’ve got nothing to lose. Let’s do an appeal on this,’” says the fast-speaking managing partner of Cross, Pennamped, Woolsey & …
As Memphis as You Can Get
David M. Cook, son of a steamboat captain, challenges juries to ‘cast the first stone’David M. Cook still considers it his toughest case. His client, a radiologist, misread the X-rays of a sickly newborn who then underwent unnecessary surgery, developed an infection and died 16 days later. As if there weren’t enough hurdles in this case, the radiologist was killed in a car accident before the civil trial began and couldn’t explain to the jury why he made the mistake. The medical facts surrounding the baby’s ordeal were heart-wrenching, recalls Cook, a medical malpractice …
Ready to Wrangle
Cheryl A. Pilate and Melanie S. Morgan wage all-out war for their clientsFor months in 2007, Kansas City, Mo., attorney Cheryl A. Pilate had been trying to hire a trusted investigator who kept turning her down because he was too busy handling cases for an Olathe, Kan., lawyer named Melanie S. Morgan. Pilate was annoyed. Who was this Morgan woman, and why was she hogging all of the researcher’s time? One day Pilate arrived at a luncheon for attorneys assigned to indigent cases and sat down across from a petite, friendly looking lawyer who shook her hand and smiled. …
The Language of Law
George “Corky” Plews has forged much of the state’s environmental and insurance coverage lawGeorge “Corky” Plews was still a junior associate at Baker & Daniels in the early 1980s when he became embroiled in a case that would not only mold his career but also set a precedent for the future of environmental law in Indiana. Litigating on behalf of the Indiana Audubon Society to halt the expansion of gravel mining into Eagle Creek Park, the young attorney worked to help show the impact of such activity on the waterfowl and other birds nesting in the park. With the help of the …
A Better Place
Steven Lieberman fights for the powerlessSteven Lieberman was a young teenager when his father embarked on a two-year crusade to allow group homes for people with developmental disabilities to open in the family’s Bronx community. Such inclusion was almost unheard of in the 1970s. “There was huge community opposition. People were afraid that the residents with special needs would bring down property values, that they’d pose a danger to others in the community,” recalls Lieberman, 54, of Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck in …
Music Rows
Nashville entertainment lawyer Linda Edell Howard goes to battle for clientsLinda Edell Howard was managing a fledgling rock band when she got the idea to set up a free “clinic” for entertainers in the back booth at The Stone Pony, a popular nightclub in New Jersey’s Asbury Park. On Sunday nights, musicians, managers, producers, agents and actors would bring in their legal questions and contracts and ask for Howard’s advice. “It became my office,” says Howard, who was a year out of college at the time. “For a slice of pizza and a beer, I would review …
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