UNC CENTER ON POVERTY, WORK AND OPPORTUNITY

ACCESS TO JUSTICE IN NORTH CAROLINA: A RIGHT TO COUNSEL IN CIVIL CASES

Participant Biographies

Laura Klein Abel Laura Klein Abel is Deputy Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, where she has worked since 1999. Her work is aimed at enhancing the ability of low-income families and individuals to obtain legal counsel and access to the courts, and at securing the freedom of nonprofit organizations to exercise their First Amendment rights in the course of assisting low- income communities.

Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Abel was a Gibbons Fellow at Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C. where she litigated on behalf of low-income people in a wide variety of cases. In preceding years, she was a staff attorney fellow for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project and clerk for Judge Robert Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Abel received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994.

Charles Becton Now an attorney with the Raleigh law firm of Fuller, Becton, Slifkin & Bell, P.A., Charles Becton is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, the American Board of Trial Attorneys and the International Society of Barristers. From 1981 to 1990, he was a Judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, and in 1985 was named North Carolina Appellate Judge of the Year. Becton was the 2008-09 president of the North Carolina Bar Association.

A recipient of many trial advocacy awards, he is also the John Scott Cansler Lecturer at the University of North Carolina School of Law and a Senior Lecturer in Law at School of Law. Becton received his J.D. from Duke University School of Law in 1969, and his LL.M. from the University of School of Law in 1986.

Janet Ward Black Principal of Ward Black Law, Janet Ward Black is the past president of the North Carolina Bar Association. Previously, she was an attorney with Donaldson & Black, P.A. and Wallace Whitley Pope & Black. She also served as an assistant district attorney for Cabarrus and Rowan counties for three years. Black was named a “North Carolina Super Lawyer” in 2006 through 2009, most recently as a Top 50 Personal Injury Lawyer and one of the top 50 women attorneys in North Carolina. She was also named in “North Carolina Legal Elite” by Business North Carolina 2007, as well as in “Best Lawyers in America” 2007 and 2008.

Black is an active member of the Access to Justice Campaign and an Advisory Panel member of Legal Services of North Carolina, among many other activities. She is past president of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers and has served on myriad committees, task forces, bar associations and boards. She is a 1985 graduate of the Duke University School of Law.

Burton Craige Before entering private practice in Raleigh in 1984, Craige was a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He has served as president of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers, president of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, chair of the ACLU-NC Legal Committee, treasurer of Legal Aid of North Carolina, and co-chair of the Civil Procedure Study Commission. He currently serves as Legal Affairs Counsel for the North Carolina Advocates for Justice and co-chairs the North Carolina Bar Association’s Tort Issues Task Force.

Craige has received the Walter Clark Award from the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers and the W.W. Finlator Award from the Wake County Chapter of the ACLU of North Carolina. He has an M.P.H. and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina.

M. Patricia DeVine Now a newly-retired Emergency Judge, Pat DeVine has served as District Court Judge in Orange and Chatham counties since May 1998. She presides over criminal and civil court, hearing matters that include divorce and child custody disputes; misdemeanor criminal cases; abused, neglected and/or delinquent juveniles; and contested involuntary hospital commitments. Her prior courtroom experience includes nearly four years as an assistant district attorney, three years as state assistant appellate defender and seven years as an assistant public defender. She clerked at the Supreme Court of North Carolina for Associate Justice Harry C. Martin after graduating in 1983 from the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Judge DeVine has been an adjunct professor at Carolina Law and has taught law-related courses to undergraduates at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has also taught at North Carolina Central University and at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

Maxine Eichner Maxine Eichner joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of Law in January 2003. Her teaching interests include sex equality, family law, employment discrimination, legal theory and torts. She writes on issues of liberal theory, feminist theory and family law, focusing on the relationship between the state and the family.

Eichner held a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship through Georgetown Law School, and clerked for Judge Louis Oberdorfer in the District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge Betty Fletcher in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She subsequently practiced civil rights, women’s rights, and employment law for several years at the law firm of Patterson, Harkavy, and Lawrence.

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She attended Yale Law School, where she was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal. While teaching law, she obtained a Ph.D. in political theory from the University of North Carolina.

Debra Gardner Debra Gardner has served as legal director of the Public Justice Center since 2000, where she engages in civil rights and poverty litigation and other advocacy. Before joining the Public Justice Center, she worked in poverty law at the Legal Aid Bureau in Maryland for more than fifteen years.

Among her duties at the Public Justice Center, Gardner pursues a judicial recognition of a civil right to counsel under the Maryland Declaration of Rights and coordinates the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel. She obtained a J.D. in 1982 from Northeastern University School of Law.

Rick Glazier Rick Glazier is presently serving his fourth term in the North Carolina General Assembly. Glazier is an employment and labor law attorney, a visiting professor in Criminal Justice at Fayetteville State University and has been teaching pre-trial law at Campbell University School of Law for thirteen years.

In the state House of Representatives, Glazier serves as the chair of the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education. He is the vice-chair of the Appropriations Committee, the Committee on Rules, Calendar and Operations of the House, the Joint Select Committee on Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Management and the Judiciary II Committee, as well as serving as a member of several other standing and interim committees including the Health, Military and Veteran’s Affairs and Mental Health committees. Glazier received his law degree from Wake Forest University in 1981.

George Hausen George Hausen has been the executive director of Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC), a statewide, non-profit law firm serving the state’s most economically marginalized households, since LANC was created in 2002. At LANC, he has been privileged to work with some of the smartest and most dedicated advocates of social justice found anywhere. He has spent his legal career in legal services since entering the bar in Chicago, where he focused on housing rights and fair housing litigation. Hausen received his J.D. from DePaul University in Chicago.

Allan Head Allan Head came to the North Carolina Bar Association as executive secretary in 1973. In 1981, he began serving as executive director of the Bar Association and the North Carolina Bar Foundation. Since 1974, he has also been an active member of the American Bar Association and the National Association of Bar Executives (NABE). He is currently serving as the president of NABE.

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Throughout the years, Allan has served on the Board of Directors of the YMCA of the USA and as President of the Capital Area (Raleigh) YMCA; he has also served on the Board of Directors of Wachovia Bank and was honored as Executive of the Year by the Southeastern Association of Executives in 2004-2005. Head has a J.D. from Wake Forest University.

Robin Hudson Robin Hudson is an Associate Justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Admitted to the North Carolina Bar in 1976, she practiced law in Raleigh and Durham until her election to the North Carolina Court of Appeals in 2000. She is the first North Carolina woman elected to the appellate court division without having been appointed first. She served on the North Carolina Court of Appeals from January 2001 until December 2006. During that time, she helped organize and coordinate the Court of Appeals voluntary mediation program. She began her eight-year term on the Supreme Court in January 2007.

Except for three years as assistant appellant defender, Justice Hudson practiced law in the private sector and handled a variety of trials and appeals, concentrating on workers’ compensation and tort litigation. She practiced extensively before the Industrial Commission, as well as in state and federal courts. Since 1994, she has been certified to mediate cases from Superior Court and the Industrial Commission. She received her J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1976.

Mark Martin Mark Martin is the only active member of the North Carolina state judiciary with experience on the Supreme Court of North Carolina, the North Carolina Court of Appeals, and the North Carolina Superior Court. At the time of his installation in 1999, he was the youngest Supreme Court Justice in North Carolina history.

Through his service to several American Bar Association (ABA) conferences and commissions, Justice Martin has helped organize continuing judicial education programs designed to promote an independent and effective judiciary. He has also sought to further these causes through his ABA service on the Commission on State Court Funding, Editorial Board of the ABA Judges’ Journal, Coalition for Justice and John Marshall Award Review Committee.

Justice Martin has taught at the University of North Carolina School of Law, North Carolina Central University School of Law and Duke University School of Law. He received his J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law and an LL.M. from the School of Law.

John McMillan John McMillan has more than 35 years’ experience representing clients before the North Carolina General Assembly, including major national corporations. He has represented many North Carolina associations and entities in legislative matters. McMillan also represents individuals, and large and small corporations in all levels of North Carolina

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state and federal court litigation. In addition, he has a broad and deep practice representing a variety of clients before various North Carolina state administrative agencies.

He currently serves as the president of the North Carolina State Bar and as immediate past president of the University of North Carolina School of Law Alumni Association. He was chair of the Legislative Advocacy Working Coalition, part of the North Carolina Bar Association’s Commission for the Delivery of Legal Services and he served as legislative chair of the 4All Task Force. He holds a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Gene Nichol Gene Nichol is professor of law and director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina. He teaches courses in constitutional law, federal courts, civil rights and election law. From 2005 until 2008, Nichol was the 26th president of the College of William & Mary. Before that, Nichol was Burton Craige Professor of Law and dean of the University of North Carolina School of Law, law dean at the University of and James Gould Cutler Professor and director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law at William & Mary. Nichol has also taught at Oxford, Exeter, Florida and West Virginia.

Nichol has published articles and essays in the country’s top law reviews and an array of leading legal journals. He has been a columnist for local and national publications, including The Washington Post, The Nation, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the News & Observer and the Denver Post. He has won many teaching and professional awards, including the American Bar Association’s Judge Edward R. Finch Law Day Speech Award and Equal Justice Works’ John R. Kramer Outstanding Law School Dean Award. Nichol obtained his J.D. from the University of Texas in 1976.

Robert Orr Robert Orr spent almost ten years as a member of the North Carolina Supreme Court and eight years on the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Prior to his appointment to the bench, he practiced law in Asheville.

After retiring from the Supreme Court, Justice Orr became the first executive director and senior counsel for the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law. He has taught appellate advocacy and state constitutional law at area law schools. He currently serves on the Board of Visitors at North Carolina Central School of Law. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Sarah Parker became the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2006. She served as an Associate Justice from 1993 until 2006 and as a Judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals from 1985 until 1992. She worked in private practice for fifteen years before entering the judiciary.

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Chief Justice Parker was vice-president of the North Carolina Bar Association and has been a member of numerous professional organizations, boards and commissions, including the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission, State Advisory Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Advisory Council of the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women. She has received the Gwyneth B. Davis Public Service Award form the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys, the Distinguished Woman of North Carolina Award and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of North Carolina, among others. She received her J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1969.

John Pollack John Pollack works for the Public Justice Center as the ABA Section on Litigation’s Civil Right to Counsel Fellow. Previously, he was the Enforcement Director for the Central Alabama Fair Housing Center and a Law Fellow for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Pollack is the founder of the Heirs’ Property Retention Coalition, a network of organizations working to preserve the ancestral property of low-income African- Americans. He graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 2005.

Kenneth Schorr Kenneth Schorr has served as executive director of Legal Services of Southern Piedmont since April 1988. He was previously in private practice in Little Rock, Arkansas representing community organizations, labor unions and individual employees in labor and civil rights cases. He served as litigation director of Community Legal Services in Phoenix, Arizona from 1979 to 1983 and as executive director of Legal Services of North Texas in , Texas from 1983 to 1987.

Schorr has also been an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University Law School; a fellow of the Murphy Center for Codification of Human and Organizational Law; and a Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School. He is currently a member of the North Carolina and District of Columbia Bars, and is a former member (resigned in good standing) of the state bars of Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona and Texas. He received a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1975, and an M.S. in Organization Development from the American University School of Public Affairs and the NTL Institute in 2002.

Patricia Timmons-Goodson A member of the Supreme Court of North Carolina since February 2006, Patricia Timmons-Goodson is the first African-American woman to sit and the third woman elected to serve on North Carolina’s highest court. She was a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals from 1997 until 2005, and before that was a District Court judge for thirteen years. With 25 years of service in the judiciary, Justice Timmons- Goodson is one of North Carolina’s longest serving active judges. She was also a staff attorney for Lumbee River Legal Services and an assistant district attorney.

Justice Timmons-Goodson is a recipient of numerous honorary degrees and professional,

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academic and civic awards, including the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. She is a 1979 graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Deborah Weissman Deborah Weissman is the Reef Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law and director of Clinical Programs at the University of North Carolina School of Law. She has extensive experience in all phases of legal advocacy, including labor law, family, education-related civil rights and immigration law, and was a partner in a civil rights firm in Syracuse, New York. From 1994 to 1998, she was deputy director and then executive director at Legal Services of North Carolina.

Weissman teaches Domestic Violence Law, Civil Lawyering Process, Civil Litigation Clinic, and the Immigration/Human Rights Policy Clinic. She is the author of numerous law review articles on human rights and domestic and gender-based violence. She serves as an Executive Committee member for The Consortium in Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, and as a member of the Advisory Board with The Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina. She graduated from Syracuse University Law School.

John Wester John Wester has spent his full legal career at Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, concentrating in complex civil litigation. He has served as lead counsel on a number of high profile cases in state and federal courts, including a statewide class action lawsuit, Hyatt v. Shalala, contesting the termination and denial of social security benefits to disabled North Carolinians. For 20 years, Hyatt proceeded through the federal judiciary, including five decisions by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and two certiorari petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a result of rulings for the Hyatt class members, over 150,000 North Carolinians have become eligible for full rehearings of their disability claims. Having taken the case pro bono, the firm donated the $475,000 attorneys’ fees to Legal Services of North Carolina and the Mecklenburg Bar's Volunteer Law Program.

Wester is the current president of the North Carolina Bar Association. In 1994, he was inducted into the American College of Trial Lawyers and he served as chairman of the North Carolina chapter of the College from 2004 through 2006. He received his J.D. from Duke University School of Law.

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