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At the end of June, we’ll be roughly four months into the COVID-19 crisis. The novel coronavirus and the measures taken to contain it have had profound effects on our society, our economy, and our nation. I’m hard-pressed to identify a four-month period as consequential for the country as the one we now find ourselves in, from March through June 2020.
The news hasn’t been all bad. Back in April, for example, I identified four silver linings to the coronavirus cloud for Biglaw. Looking beyond Biglaw, response to COVID-19 has had other benefits for the legal profession. Take the judicial system. As Chief Justice Bridget McCormack recently observed in her (virtual) testimony before Congress, the pandemic has given rise to more (positive) change in the past three months than in the past three decades, in terms of using technology to make the judicial system more accessible, transparent, and efficient.
But make no mistake: the COVID-19 crisis has harmed the legal world in a number of ways, and now is an opportune time to assess the damage. Here are three ways in which the pandemic has harmed the profession.
1. Economic Dislocation.
The most obvious negative effect of the crisis on the legal industry is the economic harm to lawyers and law firms. Since the start of the crisis, numerous law firms have announced various austerity measures to help them ride out the tough times — around 100 firms, according to Above the Law’s COVID Crisis Tracker. These measures have included pay freezes, pay cuts, furloughs, and layoffs — which all have very real economic impacts upon lawyers, staff, and their families.
And Biglaw, of course, is just a microcosm of the legal industry writ large. In April alone, the legal sector lost 64,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Is the end in sight? Maybe; there are signs that we are starting to turn the corner. But my own guess is that we still have more suffering in store before recovery.
2. Mental Health Effects.
To their credit, even before the pandemic, law firms were starting to pay more attention to the mental health of their lawyers and staff (with nudging from several sources, including Above the Law). This wasn’t a moment too soon, since the COVID-19 crisis has only exacerbated the challenges on this front.
Fears of the disease, worries over financial problems, and loneliness from isolation have caused anxiety and depression to spike within the legal profession. The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) recently polled its members and reported these findings:
Nearly 50% reported “feeling tired or having little energy” while also having trouble sleeping. More than 43% were experiencing anxiety; 40% had trouble concentrating; nearly 22% reported an “increased use of substances,” such as alcohol and tobacco; and nearly 19% said they’d been depressed. Nearly 44% had anxiety. Unsurprisingly, nearly 50% of respondents reported having trouble switching off from work and nearly 75% were experiencing moderate to very high levels of burnout.
Of course, many of us don’t need a survey to tell us this; we’ve been experiencing it firsthand. And anxiety and depression have ripple effects, harming lawyers’ ability to serve their clients, to be good colleagues, and to be there for their families and communities.
3. The Disadvantages Of Remote Learning.
This past spring, law schools abruptly went virtual, consistent with efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and government stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders. Looking ahead to the fall, some schools have already announced plans for virtual or online-only semesters, including Harvard Law School and Berkeley Law.
Law school deans, professors, and staff should be commended for their noble efforts to make this work. But there’s pretty much universal agreement that online learning is suboptimal — a poor substitute for classroom education. It’s simply much harder for students to pay attention and to participate in virtual classes.
And not all students have the resources or technology to take full advantage of online classes. It’s worth noting that when HLS announced its move to remote learning for the fall, it also announced that it was setting aside $1 million to assist students with challenges relating to internet access and other essential technology.
To sum up: law firms, law schools, and the courts are doing a superb job of responding to the terrible crisis created by COVID-19. But there’s no denying that it is, in fact, a terrible crisis. And we’re all looking forward to its end.
David Lat, the founding editor of Above the Law, is a writer, speaker, and legal recruiter at Lateral Link, where he is a managing director in the New York office. David’s book, Supreme Ambitions: A Novel (2014), was described by the New York Times as “the most buzzed-about novel of the year” among legal elites. David previously worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@laterallink.com.