This lawyer pulls some strings.

• Position: North Carolina Bar Association Pres. Jim Talley

If things get too stressful for the 100th president of the North Carolina Bar Association, Jim Talley knows how to handle it: the same way he's dealt with hectic times at his Charlotte law firm, Horack Talley Pharr & Lowndes.

"I reach for my favorite Silver Bullet," he says. Silver Bullet yo-yo, that is -- the top of the line in yo-yo hardware. "When I grab that Silver Bullet, it puts me in the state of yo."

Though his specialty is commercial real-estate law, it's plain to see that this lawyer -- who spends some of his free time singing bluegrass -- is no stuffed shirt. But Talley, 56, takes his new post as centennial president of the 10,000-member bar association seriously.

"It certainly causes you to be reflective," he says. Talley plans to concentrate on some initiatives already in place, such as urging law schools across the state to teach students practical knowledge about life after law school. Recent grads often have never seen the inside of a courtroom, he complains. They know real-estate law but can't find the office of the registrar of deeds.

When Talley was an undergrad at UNC, his ambition wasn't as much to pass the bar as to play at one. He dreamed of becoming a famous musician and cut a demo tape with his doo-wop band, the Shades. But he wound up in the Navy as a cryptologist. "That thwarted my career," he laments.

A Durham native, he was raised in a family of tobacco...