Afi Johnson-Parris Shares Credit For ABA Law Practice Division Leadership Role
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
The familiar words of Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the United States, came to mind while interviewing Afi Johnson-Parris on her new role as chair of the Law Practice Division of the American Bar Association.
Johnson-Parris has accomplished so much in the first 22 years of her legal career. She is a past president of the Greensboro Bar Association, a past chair of two NCBA sections, a former member of the NCBA Board of Governors, past chair of the NCBF DEI Advancement Task Force, and a current and former member of the NCBF Board of Directors.
But now, as she assumes a prestigious national leadership position as chair of the 30,000-member Law Practice Division, Johnson-Parris insists on sharing credit with the current and former directors of the NCBA Center for Practice Management, Catherine Sanders Reach and Erik Mazzone, respectively.
“I have been a member of the Law Practice Division since I first became an ABA member in 2002, but I really became an active member in 2011,” Johnson-Parris explains. “Erik Mazzone was active with the Law Practice Division and encouraged me to apply for a diversity fellowship, so I reactivated my membership and applied, thinking there’s no way I’m going to get this, and I ended up getting it. The premise behind the fellowship was that they would assign you to a couple of committees within the Law Practice Division and then give you funding to attend the meetings.
“I ended up being put on Membership and at the time what was called Diversity, and then Women Rainmakers. I hadn’t really thought Women Rainmakers was the spot for me. I was a solo practitioner at the time, but I really didn’t see myself as a ‘rainmaker’ like you think of in a law firm, when actually I was. Thankfully, through the guidance of folks at the Law Practice Division, they said that I needed to be in the Women Rainmakers, and once I got put on their committee, I just got really active. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of raising your hand to do something.”
And having the good sense to know Johnson-Parris was the right person for the job!
“They had a book that they wanted to do,” Johnson-Parris recalls. “It started out as an e-book on marketing for women. We would do interviews with different women to explain how they do marketing in different facets. I said, ‘Sure, I’ll help with that,’ and next thing you know I’m signing an author’s agreement, and they didn’t want it to be an e-book, they want it to be an actual full book.
“I worked on that for a couple of years with Women Rainmakers, so I am a chapter author and then editor of the entire project. It was really a heavy lift – I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But that is how I got plugged in, with the Women Rainmakers, and I served on different committees throughout the Law Practice Division, and then somebody encouraged me to submit my name for the secretary position. That is how I really got into it, because what happens is you start out as secretary and then become vice chair, and then chair-elect and now chair.”
Around the time Johnson-Parris was increasing her involvement in the Law Practice Division, she was also serving as chair of what was then known as the NCBA Law Practice Management Section. The common threads proved beneficial for both Johnson-Parris and the NCBA.
“For one thing,” Johnson-Parris said, “whenever I needed things or information or connections for North Carolina, I had them nationally. When I was chair of the Law Practice Management Section, the information and connections that I had nationally always helped inform what I did here in the state, such as the opportunity to bring in great speakers. I knew Catherine Sanders Reach before she came to the NCBA.
“A lot of people here have very little idea how prominent she is. That was a serious coup for North Carolina to get somebody of Catherine’s stature … to come to North Carolina. I mean, she’s ours! That has been really helpful, having a national reach to bring resources to North Carolina when I needed them, and also to have a platform for speaking and writing as a way to showcase North Carolina on an ABA level on Law Practice Today, which is our web-magazine.
“I have done focus articles on North Carolina lawyers, including Janet Ward Black, and one on in-house counsel here because we had a ‘Meet the Rainmakers’ column. In a few instances I used people I knew here in North Carolina. We had a diversity column and a ‘Meet the General Counsel’ column, and I have used North Carolina resources and given them an opportunity to write nationally.”
Johnson-Parris is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and earned a B.B.A in 1994 from the University of Miami, which she attended on an Air Force ROTC Academic Scholarship. She earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, Southern Colorado, in 1998, and graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2002.
In addition to being a member of The Raven Society and serving as president of the Black Law Students Association, Johnson-Parris served on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. The experience has served her well throughout her career.
“I’m not a fast writer,” Johnson-Parris said, “so I wasn’t a very good test taker in law school, but I’m a very solid writer when I have time. That’s how I ended up on Law Review – not because my grades were great and I am a good exam-taker, but I can write. I ended up getting published in Law Review in law school and was always using writing as a vehicle to get myself out there, if you will.
“There are so many opportunities in the Law Practice Division to do that. And particularly, once I started my own practice, just being around thought leaders who look at the business side of practicing law and the marketing side of practicing law was a resource that I drew on to make my practice what it is. Being able to give back to that by writing articles and profiling people who know so much more about that stuff than I do who are right here in North Carolina, that’s been something that I enjoy, particularly when you’re an issue editor for Law Practice Today. I don’t have to write the articles, I have to source the articles, so I have to go out there and use my network and find people who can write about things.
“For me it’s just easier a lot of times to say, ‘Who do I know here in North Carolina who could write about this?’ I was talking to Ed Winslow who was a partner at Brooks Pierce and asked him to write something for me one time, and he told me that even years later he would have people contact him about the article he had written. We have so many fabulous people here in North Carolina in our bar, like Erna Womble – being able to get her to write something to expose what is going on here in North Carolina to a national audience. Most of the time it is not so much me writing about me as writing about North Carolina people and featuring them.”
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Dating back to her earliest involvement in the Law Practice Division, writing and editing have been a cornerstone of her success.
“What I didn’t realize when I took on that project is that it’s much easier to be an author all by yourself than to be an editor where you have multiple authors. We had 11 chapters, so silly me, I signed up for that! You have all these different voices, and we gave people an example of what we wanted to sound like, but then we had to go back and massage it so that you have one voice in this book of all of these different authors. Just the logistics of everybody getting their photo in or everybody meeting deadlines was a lot, and then we had to market the book, which I didn’t know. I guess I just thought I wrote it and tossed it over the fence and I’m done! We had to market it and we had to develop programming around it to feature some of the articles to get the book out there. That was quite the education.”
Her military background, combined with great appreciation for following rules and meeting deadlines, have figured prominently in her work as both an editor and an attorney.
“I definitely feel like having what we call suspenses or deadlines, and then being a litigator where you get deadlines that mean something, all of that has come to bear,” Johnson-Parris said. “Certainly, the discipline from the Air Force fed over into what I do in practice. I’m kind of a rule follower, and it’s funny, my clients will grouse that I’m hard on them for meeting deadlines because then the other side will bust those deadlines. And I’m just like, ‘but that’s not my client, and this is what the rule says, so I’m going to follow the rules.’
“That’s part of everything that I do – really trying to stay on task. For the book, because my co-editor was in Arizona, we had a two-hour time difference a lot of time. We would set up a call once a week to look at where we were, stay on task, who hadn’t provided what, what author we needed to get on. As editors, we were the first task of editing, and then there were professional copywriters and editors who will look at it after we had provided the first-view edit. Like I said, it was as education. I thought I was getting into a little itty bitty old e-book and then next thing you know I’m signing author agreements and all kinds of stuff. It was crazy.”
Johnson-Parris is a partner with Fox Rothschild and an N.C. State Bar Board Certified Family Law Specialist. She is also a past chair of the Family Law Section who has worked in a boutique firm and operated a solo practice. This wide range of professional experience meshes perfectly with the varied backgrounds shared by members of the Law Practice Division.
“I think a lot of times the solo and small firm lawyers gravitate to the Law Practice Division, but certainly there is something there for lawyers of larger firms,” Johnson-Parris said. “One of the things that Ed Winslow actually started when he was president of the Greensboro Bar Association was what he called the law practice colloquium. Ed said that the common denominator amongst all lawyers is that we all have law practice issues, whether you’re in a small firm or large firm. There are quite a few family lawyers in it, but certainly lawyers of all kinds, and then there’s a lot of vendors in it, people who really serve law firms: technology vendors, law practice vendors, marketing, management. But the common denominator is really law practice: How can we deliver services to clients more effectively and efficiently?
“ABA TECHSHOW is one of our largest programs that we put on every year, not just in our division but in the ABA in general. The first time I went, just being able to see all of the vendors who service law firms in one area was just so helpful and it helped me come back to Greensboro with ideas. There was a family law roundtable at the ABA TECHSHOW, and I talked to a family court judge from Colorado who talked about how their courthouses were spread out pretty far apart. This was before Zoom, and before the pandemic, but they were using a platform like Zoom to be able to do pretrial conferences that wasn’t a burden on practitioners who had to get to different courthouses.”
The potential for remote conferencing resonated with Johnson-Parris.
“These pretrial conferences are really short; the time that it takes me to get out of my office, drive there, and get into the courthouse a lot of times is longer than the conference. I came back to Greensboro all fired up, and was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’ve got to do this.’ This would make it so much easier because Guilford County is one of the few counties in the state of North Carolina that has two courthouses. And the distance between our Greensboro and High Point courthouse can be anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes.”
The initial reaction was tepid, at best, but when the pandemic hit, Johnson-Parris was ready.
“Texas had done a CLE that I found out about through Law Practice, where the Texas judges were talking about how to do hearings remotely,” Johnson-Parris said. “I sent that information on to our Chief District Court Judge here, and we were up and running and getting stuff done.
“Those types of resources have really made a difference for me as a family lawyer. Our cases are in District Court, and we’ve just got to get stuff done – we can’t wait for the pandemic or whatever. For me, as a family lawyer, that involvement with Law Practice has really informed what I do in terms of finding tools to make my practice better and just getting ideas that all lawyers in general but particularly family lawyers can benefit from.”
In her year as chair, Johnson-Parris will continue working on an initiative that she collaborated on as chair-elect with Mary Vandenack, who preceded her as division chair.
“The prior chair started out with the concept of a law practice-type boot camp,” Johnson-Parris said, “where newer lawyers or perhaps solo and small-firm lawyers would get programming and information that would have them versed in the four areas that the Law Practice Division focuses on: Management, Technology, Finance and Marketing. We came up with that idea over a dinner that we had at some ABA meeting and really started to work through that. She got the concept started last year and during my year my focus is trying to bring that to fruition.
“At our fall meeting we did the first preview for the program and what it’s going to look like. Tom Grella of Asheville was one of the presenters. He was leading the ad hoc committee that was working on it last year. We presented some of it and we’re asking our active members to give their feedback, because we’re not ready for prime time. But as we tweak it and get ready to put this out, we want to make sure that we’re providing the best product because we’re probably one of the top content providers in the ABA. We have to make sure this mastery series is really up to par with the type of content that we want to put out. That’s my initiative this year – to make sure that it is ready to go.”
And wherever her service as chair of the Law Practice Management Division takes her, Afi Johnson-Parris will remain an advocate for the NCBA and its Center for Practice Management.
“This is not even something that I would have envisioned had it not been for somebody like Erik Mazzone, and that all circles back to the NCBA,” Johnson-Parris said. “When Erik was over the Center for Practice Management, when I first decided to go out on my own as a solo, he was one of the first people I contacted. That’s how I met him: I’m about to start a firm and here are my concerns and questions. For me, that’s one of the most valuable things that the bar association provides.
“Every time I have friends who leave a firm and start their own firm or something like that, I tell them, ‘If you are an NCBA member, you need to talk to the people in this office.’ Because it is one of the best member values there is – helping us figure out how to practice better and what tools you need. Particularly when you’re smaller, using our Center for Practice Management really helps to leverage what you can do. Catherine Sanders Reach has so much knowledge about all of the different tools and resources that that are out there that you don’t have to go and figure that out yourself.”
It all comes back to that initial connection, Johnson-Parris concluded.
“If Erik Mazzone hadn’t suggested it, I didn’t understand how the ABA works in terms of becoming active. I was a member, but in terms of getting funded to participate in all this type of stuff, that all circles back to my involvement in the NCBA. And as much as I want people to be involved in the Law Practice Division, what I really want them to do – oh gosh, Catherine Sanders Reach is going to kill me! – but what I really want them to do is take advantage of what we have right here in North Carolina.
“Sometimes you just don’t know what you have, but y’all, she’s like a rock star. The regard with which she’s held in the Law Practice Division is so high. She’s been the chair of our TECHSHOW. People spend years in the Law Practice Division to get to be over TECHSHOW. This is one of the most important events that the Law Practice Division puts on, and Catherine has done that. For us to have her at our disposal as members, I want people to start right here with her. We provide great value, Catherine does, and I think her connection to the Law Practice Division is just so valuable for the state of North Carolina.”
Regardless of who gets the credit.
Russell Rawlings is director of external affairs and communications for the North Carolina Bar Association.