In our latest episode of the Building Legal Foundations Podcast, join Chad Cochran and Nan Hannah as they discuss the differences between employees and independent contractors, the intersection of marketing and service to your community, and more.

Transcript

Chad Cochran  0:04

Hello, I’m Chad Cochran.

 

Nan Hannah  0:06

I’m Nan Hannah.

 

Chad Cochran  0:07

Welcome to the building legal foundations podcast presented by Hannah Sheridan and Cochran. We are a civil law firm representing clients in business, construction and civil litigation issues across North Carolina. Our goal for this platform is to provide useful legal information, not advice, as well as insight into the legal and business landscape we encounter during our legal practices. We will try to present issues at a high level and keep bean counting to a minimum. Let’s have some fun and learn something new. Thanks for joining.

All right, as we do on our podcast, we are going to move through a three part agenda, first with a business moment, business update. Then the meat of our presentation will be a conversation with Nan and I about community service and community involvement. And then we will end our podcast today with Nan giving a bit of a community service update, that’s where we’ll roll. But first and foremost, let’s knock out our business update. So we have a lot of small business clients that call us for various reasons. Employee issues one way or another, are pretty common thing that we see in North Carolina, most employees are classified as at will employees, meaning that they can leave their job or be terminated for just about any arbitrary reason under the sun. The big thing is that they cannot be terminated for discriminatory reasons. In the state and case law sets out some of those specific categories, race, gender, etc, but in general, we are kind of the wild west of employment in North Carolina, with at will employment being the baseline standard. And then a caveat to that comes as you start running small businesses, you start to learn that employees are more expensive than independent contractors. If you have someone classified as an independent contractor, you’re just paying them a set amount of money for a set task. But typically you’re not funding their insurance premiums, their, you know, retirement, those types of overhead, types of things that may play into a normal employee. So there’s motivation on tasks to hand those off to independent contractors, to do those tasks, to pay out a lesser amount of insurance and taxes at the same time the government, both the state and the federal government, have rules that protect against classifying people as independent contractors when they should actually be classified as employees. When you’re an employee, your employer should be taking out withholding taxes, paying the state and federal government their fair share of payroll taxes, etc. So the state and federal government have an interest in looking at who is an employee, who is an independent contractor, and then some of the rights and responsibilities flow out of that. So that’s a primer at a nutshell on what is an independent contractor, what’s an employee in terms of where the lines fall the there are different tests that apply in state and federal. We won’t go too deeply into those today, but it is good to know that really at a macro level, the level to which you are controlling that given person is often indicative of whether they should be classified as an employee or not. If there’s someone that’s in the office and you’re giving them an instruction multiple times a day, multiple times an hour, looking at their work, you know, micromanaging their day, they probably should be an employee in that circumstance, versus if there’s someone that you interact with maybe once a month, don’t have that close of a relationship. So there’s more specifics to that those requirements, but for purposes of today, I think we’ll just leave it there at a high level, and also know that as you get into these issues, and whether you’re deciding whether or not to classify someone as an employer, independent contractor, there is guidance that comes both out of the state and the federal level. The Biden administration issued some new rules earlier this year, which issue a number of factors that one should look at when determining what how these people should be classified at a federal level, Department of Labor rule, and also there are similar rules factors to look into at the state level, in term determining how employees should be classified properly as that employee, or whether or not you might classify as them as an independent contractor to save a bit of money, but also know that there is not as much control in that relationship. Sure. Thanks for our business moment. Business update. Now let’s get into the nuts and bolts of why we’re here, which is our discussion about community service with Nan.

So. Let’s get going. Nan, welcome.

 

Nan Hannah  5:01

I’m glad to be here.

 

Chad Cochran  5:03

Well, this is our first podcast together, but we have obviously worked together for a while. How do we know each other?

 

Nan Hannah  5:09

Let’s see. I long story. I was down in Charlotte when I got your resume and we had an opening. So I shared it with our my then partner, and we hired you. Yep,

 

Chad Cochran

And I think that was 2006 2007, and we worked at that firm until 2013 and then started this firm in 2013 alongside Paul Sheridan. And we’re still going. We had some rock so some interesting days along the way, but we’re in a in a strong position with us for moving into the future.

 

Nan Hannah

thank heavens.

 

Chad Cochran  5:49

We are, you know, obviously, during our day jobs, we are billing clients and producing legal work, and hopefully, you know, doing good things for their legal causes. But at the same time around here, we tend to talk about community service and getting involved in the community. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that, like when we hire a new associate, what are we telling them? What? What is important about being a lawyer in the community?

 

Nan Hannah  6:16

Well, first thing to remember is that being a lawyer you are. It’s a service profession, and it’s also a relational profession. So you really need to know people, to know, be known in the community, for people to find you. They’re 15,000 or so lawyers in Wake County. We need or 5000 or so lawyers in Wake County. You need to be able to distinguish yourselves. But also just in life, I think there are three buckets of time that a professional needs to keep in mind you describe. The first one, which is, we need to serve our clients. We need to be lawyers. Unfortunately, that means, since we work by the billable hour, that we need to sell time and Bill time, and that’s one bucket, and that’s an important bucket. Another bucket that’s really important is family and personal time and being completely away, unplugged recovery time. But I think most people miss the third bucket, and the third bucket crosses those two. It’s the things that you enjoy doing out in the community, to be involved, but also which allow you to meet other people, to interact and just to be known. So that that’s kind of where I come from. It’s the way I was definitely raised. But it’s important to do things like the the best example for me is for 21 years I coached basketball at the Cary YMCA. Now, if you know me, you know that for the eight years before law school, I also was a high school basketball coach and track coach, as well as teaching most mostly social studies. But going and coaching, I got to know wonderful kids. I also got to know their parents, who spanned every possible part of the community and the business world. I got to have fun and do what I love doing, but I also was building those relationships, not only with the basketball teams and parents, but also with the folks at the Y, and eventually, as we’ll talk about at the very end of this, being involved in the Cary community and the greater triangle community through the access to the Y.

 

Chad Cochran  8:34

So I think you mentioned family along the way. Your dad was an attorney, as most of us know, tell us a little bit how he went about this, and what did you learn from him? Maybe a little bit about your mom too during those years.

 

Nan Hannah  8:46

Yeah, that I was raised in a family. You can go back generations to find how many ways my ancestors have been involved in community service across the board. But my dad taught me from the get go. He was a lawyer for over 50 years. He is in the general practice, Hall of Fame for the Bar Association, and a lot of that had to do with the relationships he built. And he laughed, because at the end of his career, he went back and he looked to see what was the source of his clients, what was his best way of marketing in the time he was raised when lawyers literally were forbidden to market, and he figured out that his single largest source of clients was his involvement in boy scouting. And he did not do boy scouting because he was trying to market. He did it because he was a scout growing up, and he loved the whole concept of scouting, but he not only had his scouts, his scouts parents, his scouts, when they became adults and became professionals, then their kids. We figured out my brother and I figured out that he had up to four generations of families that he represented that all to. Tied back into the fact he was involved in scouting, much the same he was involved in Greensboro. The JCS were a very active group, and he was involved in it, not only when he was younger, and helping with the greater Greensboro open, which they ran, and other things, but I used to call them the crock pots. But they had the old timers, group of JCS that stayed, he stayed involved in that till he was probably 80. So, you know, I saw those examples, examples of there being both. My parents were elders at first, Presbyterian in Greensboro. My mother was the quintessential 1940s 1950s 1960s housewife. But if you think that means she sat around the house, you’d be way wrong. She was involved in as many activities as dad was. Viewing that as her both giving back to the community and again, building relationships that help dad in his profession as well.

 

Chad Cochran  11:02

I want to talk about kind of your career journey to some extent, and what you’ve been what, what in the community gave you pleasure along the way. But before we get there, I kind of want to have a conversation. I don’t know how your answer this, what, what is community to you. And the reason I asked this is, I think I’m thinking about your dad, you know, kind of, back in those days, you know, a much closer kind of, you know, the community group, the lunch groups, the Boy Scouts, the neighbor, the community groups. You know, that was obviously before the internet. And you know now the community can be someone in another state, another country, but it also, you know, you still need your close people at home. How do you define community for you? And then how do you decide what’s worth pitching into?

 

Nan Hannah  11:50

I think, the idea of community. And again, I had this wonderful role model growing up, and I the Bar Association folks laugh because I have been to more bar meetings than almost anybody living because we started going when I was being carried in a stroller or whatever. But dad, when I was eight, I think, got involved in the ABA for the first time, American Bar Association, and that started us going and traveling around the country. And what I learned from watching dad was he made sure he met people, and didn’t just meet them, but got to know them in each of these pods, if you will, these communities, and the law firm that he worked for has now merged twice since dad retired, but part of the reason they got they merged was that dad had developed such relationships across the country, that that firm was known as one of the preeminent construction law firms, not just in North Carolina, but nationwide, and So other firms wanted to be linked to them, and it was all because dad had those connections. And even since I’ve been practicing some of the connections he had when he retired, have called me looking for things. So back to your question of what a community is. I think you know, if you were buying Webster’s Dictionary, you’re going to find a community as any grouping of people with a similar interest, and where Raleigh used to be small and Greensboro used to be small, in the community, the business community, all knew each other, and all the lawyers knew each other. That’s no longer the case, so you have to seek out your interest, your community, my White Memorial Presbyterian Church, I am far from the only lawyer in that church, but I’ve got a grand community of business contacts just because of knowing the folks in my church. The Y is a community, I’ll be honest. I went there because I wanted to coach basketball and I needed somewhere to work out while I was studying for the bar. But it took me very little time to develop relationships that are now 30 years old and have grown exponentially, not only through the carry why, but now into the triangle y, and they’re all folks that are all folks that are very prominent in the business community. Well, not all are prominent, but all are involved in the business community, both in Cary and in Raleigh. And so there are any number of places I walk into, and a connection is already made, even if it’s a new community for me. And as far as how you kind of find your community. I’ve told the young lawyers in this firm, including Chad, that finding your community is where your interest and your passions are. I have a master’s in physical education, which I get to use very rarely. But through that and that interest, I met Hill carro.

Fulfilling. I know it makes you sleep better at night, feel like you’ve done good, good to community, but also, it does help get your name out there, right, and it generates business.

 

Chad Cochran  20:10

right? Talk, talk about that. How is how is it? The after a while, you would get a call from a friend or something like that, as opposed to really having to, you know, create more of an organic client through the internet or something. How has that paid dividends for you professionally?

 

Nan Hannah  20:27

I think I almost learned by not doing it well to start with, because I mentioned basketball earlier, and I realized after I’d finished, or more or less finished coaching, that I did a terrible job of telling the parent. The parents all knew I was a lawyer, but very, very few of them knew what kind of lawyer, what kind of law I practiced. So that was a lesson to me that when I get involved in these groups and people say, hey, what do you do? You don’t just say I’m a lawyer. First of all, I say I’m a construction lawyer, and then go on and describe that I’m at a smaller firm that does civil litigation and business law, and let the folks know who you are and what you are. And if you show you’re competent in your volunteer activities, and you show that you get things finished, and you get things across the finish line, then when they’re in their business world and they need a lawyer, they’re going to pick up the phone and call you, even if it’s not what you do, because they’re going to trust that you’re going to take care of them. So they call and they say, I need you for a divorce, and I’m going to go, No, you don’t. But here are three friends of mine that I know that are really, really good lawyers in that type of field. We’ve talked about it before, but the single greatest source of my business is other lawyers. And it was, it’s been important to go to my construction laws stuff and deal with the lawyers that I have to deal with every day on the phone. But it’s equally important to be involved in all these other more general legal organizations, because I get to know people that practice in all sorts of different areas of law and all sorts of different parts of the state. Then if we need favors, we got somebody we can call. If we need a lawyer, we’ve got somebody. But if they don’t do what we do, and especially with some of the esoteric things we do, like lean law, they go, oh, gosh, this is one of those mechanics liens. That’s what Nan does, and they call us. So developing those relationships, both in the profession and in the community, and letting people know who you are and what you do and that you’re reliable is the best marketing tool we’ve got

 

Chad Cochran  22:41

very good, very good. Well, Nan, thanks for your time. Wind this down and and kind of move on to other topics. But before we go, I thought I’d ask you one final question, which is, the bar exam is next week. And you know, there’s a lot of young lawyers that, what is it? 60 some percent of them will pass, and we’ll be be lawyers in a month or two, if they’re starting their career, you know, digging into the work, but also looking for things in the community, with all of the time pressures that young lawyers have and all that, you know, what’s a tip that you would give them about how to choose?

 

Nan Hannah  23:17

find something, find something That fits that third bucket, something that you enjoy doing, that gives you pleasure, that gives you a release. I could walk out, and I did walk out of a trial and straight onto a basketball court. And all the pressure and all the mess that was going on in my head with that trial was gone because I got to focus on those kids and doing that, and yet, as a result of that, I got to know all these people that I have become, come friends and become clients and other people. So it’s really you’re going to try some things, and you’re going to walk in and go, Dick, this is not what I thought it was. Don’t be afraid to just take that one and go check the box. I’m not going back. But there’s some that you’re going to walk into that you’re uncomfortable, but you realize there still is value and there’s good go back. Find a way to help, find a way to get actively involved and give it a six months or a year, see if it really is a good fit and if it is, and work your way up in it. But it you’re not going to walk into very many places and say, Hi, I’m here. I want to be involved. Make me president. You gotta, you gotta work at it.

 

Chad Cochran  24:29

They build some trust along the way, and you’ve done that in many, many places. Nan, so on behalf of our larger community, thank you, and thanks for your time today.

 

Nan Hannah  24:38

So the third and final part of the podcast today is our community service moment, a chance for us to talk about what Hannah Sheridan and Cochran does in the community and most specifically, some of the various organizations we have supported through the years. Uh, we mentioned during the earlier conversation, my involvement with the Cary y, which is now the Taylor y, and also with the YMCA of the triangle. And I have been involved in that organization since May of 1993 when I arrived in Cary, one of the reasons I picked the Y is because I needed a place to work out. But in the time I spent during the summer, when I was studying for the bar, working out and watching the summer camp at the Taylor y, it did not take me long to gain a huge level of admiration for the people they had working, the staff they had working, how they worked with the kids in the camp. And I wanted to know more. I also wanted to coach basketball, and I met the director who was handling basketball, and slowly but surely, I got involved in a number of different parts of the Y leading up to being very involved with their outreach program. And most people think of the Y as a swim and gym or something similar, and are unaware of how much work the YMCA does across the Triangle region in supporting folks that could benefit from the Y services but can’t afford the wise services. They run a summer camp that’s fully subsidized. They not only in Cary, but also in Raleigh and some of the surrounding communities. They have individual camps for those communities. They run a youth legislature, which I’ve been involved with for a number of years, that actually puts on a Youth and Government conference in the summer that offers a legislature, a judicial branch and an executive branch track for the kids to learn about how government works. They run after school programs, both for the kids that can’t afford the y and for kids who are whose parents are working. They don’t just provide games. They also provide academic support. They provide opportunities at Christmas for families that otherwise would have no Christmas, to have access to buy at an extremely reduced rate, presence for their kids. Just more things than I can tell you, and having worked with those children, I am amazed at the difference the Y can make in a community I refer to it as the anti gang, because the kids I worked with on the outreach basketball team were constantly under pressure from gangs to get involved in activities that would not have been good for them, and the Y provided them an out. And so that’s one of the reasons that we as a firm have chosen as one of our philanthropic beneficiaries the YMCA of the triangle, and support them through their golf marathon and through the we build people program. So I think that’s if you’ve not been involved with the Y and you don’t know what the y is doing, feel free to give me a call, because I am one of their biggest cheerleaders.

 

Nan Hannah  28:12

And with that, I think that will wrap up our podcast for today. Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode of the building legal foundations podcast, we hope we’ve provided some useful insight that you can take into the world and that you’ll join us in another month for our next installment.