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
Keeping the Peace: Minimizing Family Disputes Through Estate Planning
While advising a couple about how to pass on the family’s real estate business to their grown children, estate planning attorney Stephanie Heilborn met separately with them and their children. Among other things, Heilborn explained how certain documents could allow the siblings to opt out of direct involvement in the company in the future if they chose to do so. “The parents were not in the same room with the children, so the children felt safe asking me questions about how the whole …
How Juries Are Selected in Criminal Cases
After the end of the 2025 retrial of Harvey Weinstein, during which the former film producer was convicted on one count of sexual assault, acquitted on a second, and granted a mistrial on the third, a juror confided in Weinstein’s attorney, Arthur Aidala. “You were my guy from the time we met at jury selection,” she told him. “I loved your style and I just believed in you.” That type of two-out-of-three win, says Aidala, who practices criminal defense at Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins …
Forward Together
Four Oklahoma attorneys discuss the changes they’ve seen in their 20 years in the professionMegan Beck started practicing family law in 2005. Since then, relationship-building has become more important than ever. “Legal knowledge is obviously a very integral component, but how you are able to work with other people is just as important, regardless of the kind of law that you’re in, whether it’s contracts, estate planning or litigating a big case,” she says. “All you’re doing is trying to make a deal, and if you don’t have the interpersonal skills to do that, you’re not …
One With the Underdogs
Competitive instincts motivate litigator Michael PorterTwenty-five years ago, in his first trial as a newly commissioned officer in the U.S. Army JAG Corps, Michael Porter stood in front of a military jury at Fort Riley in Kansas, prosecuting a soldier accused of sexually assaulting a child. “Without knowing much, I was being thrust in the cauldron of a high-pressure jury trial—and it was truly sink or swim,” Porter recalls. “Maybe I was too dumb to be afraid, but I jumped in headfirst. I thought all the way through the trial that I …
Choosing the Right Nursing Home for Loved Ones: Elder Law Attorneys Weigh In
The signs are getting harder to ignore. Your elderly parent is falling more often, forgetting to take medications, and you’re physically and mentally exhausted from caring for them. “That may be a time for family members to step in and say, ‘You need a different level of care,’” says Marilyn G. Miller, an elder law attorney with a solo practice in Dripping Springs, Texas. But choosing the right nursing home can be daunting. Where do you start? For legal advice on finding the right …
Keep on Swimming
Dara Goldsmith is a champion in law and deep waterDuring one of her law school classes, Dara Goldsmith listened intently as a guest speaker described how he’d negotiated a settlement on behalf of passengers on a Delta airplane that crash landed in New Orleans. He called it, “the least amount of money paid out in the history of aerospace when you take into account cost-of-living adjustments” after a Delta plane carrying about 100 passengers collided with the runway in New Orleans. When he finished his story, Goldsmith raised her hand. …
Hitting the Mark
Stephen Hilger excels at archery, music, photography and—oh, yeah—lawAbout 30 years ago, after Stephen Hilger granted his 5-year-old son Andy’s Christmas wish of a youth bow, he took the boy to the archery range to teach him how to shoot. That’s when he made a happy discovery. “There, on the wall,” Hilger recalls, “hung the same type of bow that I shot when I was in college.” Discovering archery as a freshman at the University of Florida had been “a happy accident,” recalls Hilger, who has tried more than 300 cases as a construction …
Adaptation
Four millennial attorneys talk learning curves, AI, and paying down debtRaised eyebrows. Assumptions. Being mistaken for support staff. Attorneys who have practiced law for less than a decade say they routinely struggle with misconceptions about their age. Karishma Patel, who handles estate planning and probate matters with McDowall Cotter, took a lot of flak when she began practicing in 2019. “Clients, and sometimes other attorneys, look at you,” she says. “You’re a young woman, and they think you’re not experienced until you actually show them.” …
A Tale of Two Practices
More than 30 years of martial arts study helps Joel Frank focus—and read his opponents—in courtThe young Joel Frank was constantly in motion, playing lacrosse, running track and competing in pickup football games and street hockey with his buddies. So when he noticed a couple of martial arts studios near the University of Delaware during his junior year there, he decided to try his hand. Gravitating toward Chinese Kenpo—”It suited my build and my interests,” says the 6-foot-1 litigator—he went on to earn a third-degree black belt over the next 12 years. “I’m not the …
The Master of Negotiation
Joe Rice wrangles the settlements no one else canFor several years, through the ups and downs of proposed federal regulations that, in the end, fell short by one vote in Congress, Joe Rice had been testing ways to hold Big Tobacco accountable for its marketing campaigns, which he says targeted underage audiences. Finally, a breakthrough: A lawyer for the defense called Rice and asked the question he’d been waiting to hear. “Is there a way to handle this in a reasonable fashion?” But the night before the meeting Rice had arranged with …
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