Author: TSA Press

In eight days, it will be my sixth anniversary writing for Above The Law. But as most of you may know, David Lat announced that he tested positive for COVID-19 and was recently admitted into the ICU. So today, I want to write a reflective column on how David and I got to know each other over the past six years.

In the beginning of 2014, Above The Law published a casting call for new bloggers. I don’t remember much at that time other than generally feeling lost and uncertain that I wouldn’t know what I could contribute. I thought I could write about small firms, but I couldn’t in good conscience give advice on a very popular blog considering my practice was barely breaking even at the time even with a shoestring budget. And at the time, I was frustrated with solo practice and wanted to get a job instead. I needed an outlet for my frustrations and why not do it on the most popular legal blog in the country?

So on March 16, 2014, I sent David an email proposing a column about my job search and the dark side of solo practice that no one wants to talk about. I assumed that many prominent people would salivate at the opportunity to write for Above The Law so I didn’t have high hopes for a response. But a few days later, David got back to me and said that it would make an interesting column. After signing some paperwork and familiarizing myself with the blogging platform, Shannon Achimalbe was born.

I remember for the first few months, David would give me positive feedback (with the exception of one) on every column I wrote. I was very appreciative for his personal attention, although I sometimes wondered whether he was making sure I didn’t make a major blooper.

That fall, David said he would send me a copy of his novel Supreme Ambitions as a birthday present. I was delighted and hoped I would get an autographed copy in case he becomes the next John Grisham. But that didn’t happen since it came directly from one of Amazon’s warehouses. That’s fine. I figured I would get his autograph when we meet in person one day.

Since we lived in different parts of the country, David and I have met only a few times. We met at least twice in 2015 when he was in Los Angeles promoting his book. I remember one of those times. He and Alex Kozinski (a judge at the time) hosted a CLE event at the Ninth Circuit Courthouse in Pasadena. Our group got an opportunity to see some of the nonpublic portions of the court, including some of the judges’ chambers. One night, a group of us went out to dinner and a bar where the major topics of discussion were federal clerkships and Biglaw. Most of that discussion made me think about puppies, but I do remember an excited David mentioning that he spoke with some Hollywood executives about the possibility of turning Supreme Ambitions into a movie.

The last time we met was in December 2017 when I was in New York for the ATL holiday party. There, I also got a chance to catch up with Elie, Staci, Joe, and Kathryn. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the book with me. When I returned home, 60 degree weather felt unusually warm for the next few weeks.

We didn’t talk much since then since his son was born, and I was busy doing other things.

About a year ago David announced that he would be leaving Above The Law to be a managing director at Lateral Link. At that point, while we will still stayed in touch online, I figured we would not meet again for a very long time. So I put my copy of Supreme Ambitions away in my closet library, somewhere between one of Martin Ginsburg’s M&A tax treatises and a the latest Nintendo Switch Strategy Guide.

When David first announced that he was diagnosed with the coronavirus, I was shocked to see a photo of him in a hospital, but I didn’t think much of it. He didn’t meet most of the risk factors that could result in complications. He was young, healthy, and happy. I figured he would be discharged in a few days and would blog about his fever and the 2021 Supreme Court Clerkship Draft while quarantining himself in his bedroom.

So when I heard that David was admitted to the ICU and placed on a ventilator, like many others, I anxiously waited for updates on his condition. While I am confident that he will eventually recover, due to the unknowns surrounding COVID-19, I fear that his recovery could be a slow process.

From that moment, I understand that the government-imposed travel bans and stay-at-home restrictions, while draconian, are necessary. Some people I know think we are overreacting, but I think they will change their tune once someone they care about tests positive for the virus.

The coronavirus made us rethink what’s important. A few months ago, people were lining up for the newest iPhone. Now, people are lining up for food and toilet paper. Sometimes, it takes moments like these to fully appreciate the positive impact certain people have made in our lives. The people who open doors for you that you didn’t think were there or that you couldn’t open yourself. The people who give you a chance when no one else would. We’re so busy running the rat race that we forget about them. Don’t do that. Thank them. Honor them. And be there for them during their time of need.

David, thanks for giving me a shot. My columns didn’t make me famous or get me a blue check mark next to my name. They didn’t result in a job, high-paying clients, awards, or a Netflix special. But over the years, people have told me that my columns helped them avoid mistakes in their practices. Some helped college graduates choose the right law school. Some reduced their tax bill or their monthly IBR student loan payments. And some just put a smile on people’s faces after a bad day. That makes everything worth it, and I’m grateful.

Get well soon, my friend. Because I am still waiting for your autograph.

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Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at sachimalbe@excite.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.

What would American corporations do without Jones Day to put in a good word with the higher ups at the Justice Department? It would be pandemonium if those pesky U.S. Attorneys were allowed to just prosecute every Fortune 500 company that broke the law, right? Thank goodness we have such a well-connected firm to perform the valuable public service of protecting shareholder bottom lines. Why, it’s almost like pro bono work!

Take a break from your COVID-19 panic attack to read ProPublica’s wild piece on the Eastern District of Texas’s two-year-long effort to hold Walmart accountable for dispensing millions of opioids, despite clear evidence that they were being illegally prescribed and likely diverted for resale. It features an especially unflattering cameo by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who, when advised that a civil fine would be meaningless to a company like Walmart with unlimited cash, quipped, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, we are all capitalists here.”

LOL.

Then he told them to lay off corporate, and see if they could indict some poor schlub in middle management. But when the Texas USAs tried to prosecute a “mid-level Walmart manager,” political appointees at Main Justice blocked that, too,

“You have a whopper of a civil case,” said former Kirkland and Ellis partner Brian Benczkowski, who has never actually tried a case in court, but is somehow the head of the DOJ’s Criminal Division. But after Jones Day’s intercession, the civil case was eighty-sixed, as well. It’s good to have friends in high places!

The case started back December 2016, when the DEA raided a Walmart in McKinney, Texas pursuant to an investigation of two pain management doctors, Howard Diamond and Randall Wade, for drug trafficking.

Walmart pharmacists had been sounding the alarm about Diamond for more than a year.

“We are all concerned about our jobs and about filling for a pill mill doctor. I’m in my 29th year with Walmart and have never had a situation this bad with a doctor,” one pharmacist wrote to corporate in Febraury, 2015. “Other chains are refusing to fill for him which makes our burden even greater. Please help us.”

That same month, another wrote, “Doctor Diamond is a problem and a liability on us… Filling for him is a risk that keeps me up at night. This is a serious situation.”

Indeed, Kroger, CVS, Walgreens, Target, and RiteAid had all blocked his patients from filling prescriptions at their stores. But Walmart continued to insist that there could be no blanket ban on individual prescribers, and pharmacists had to take twenty minutes to fill out a form rejecting individual prescriptions on a case by case basis. So Walmart didn’t ban Wade until November 2016, a month after he was indicted, and held off on banning Diamond until March of 2017. By then, Walmart had dispensed 2.2 million doses of controlled substances, averaging 21 prescriptions per day for the two doctors together, between 2011 and 2016.

All of which took place under the pendency of a secret Memorandum of Agreement, with the DEA, reached after a Walmart in California “dispensed controlled substances to individuals that [the pharmacy] knew or should have known were diverting the controlled substances.”

In the spring of 2018, the Eastern District of Texas informed Walmart that it intended to bring a criminal action, and Jones Day swung into action. It was ugly from the jump.

According to two people familiar with the prosecution, [AUSA Heather] Rattan told the Walmart side that the company should feel embarrassed by its conduct. Walmart would portray it differently, claiming that Rattan said her goal was “to embarrass Walmart” with a criminal indictment. (Walmart’s account is captured in a letter of complaint [Jones Day partner Karen] Hewitt sent the next month to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.)

Walmart’s attorneys accused the DOJ of using the threat of criminal prosecution to extort a huge civil fine. And Jones Day wasn’t above working the refs, either, sending a letter to Benczkowski in August complaining that prosecuting Walmart, a company which took in $514 billion in 2019, was somehow an attack on the poor and elderly.

The letter argued that a conviction could harm “millions of low-income and elderly citizens” who rely on federal programs for food and medicine. A convicted corporation might not be permitted to participate in those programs any longer. She outlined what she said were Walmart’s “remedial” measures to become “an industry leader in the Nation’s fight against the opioid crisis.”

Soon after, an official in the deputy attorney general’s office called Brown and told him to halt the Texas office’s criminal investigation, according to five people familiar with the investigation.

The company made similar work of the civil claims. Three guesses which company’s name is behind that black redaction bar in this excerpt from the resignation letter of EDTX’s civil division head Josh Russ.

The whole article is bonkers, and if you need to spend 20 minutes not thinking about coronavirus — and you know you do! — you should read it.

Walmart Was Almost Charged Criminally Over Opioids. Trump Appointees Killed the Indictment. [ProPublica]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Well, this sucks (can I say that?) Did the term “social distancing” even exist a few weeks ago? I don’t think so. Could anyone have even defined it?

I think we are all feeling that life will never be the same, akin to the feeling we had after 9/11. Life resumed, but it was never the same. That’s how it feels now. There already are sweeping changes in the practice and more will come.

Managers who frowned on working remotely have embraced it (the wrong word here in this world of social distancing, but you know what I mean). Younger lawyers are leading the way in using available technology to practice efficiently, effectively, and remotely. We dinosaurs who are still working need to get a grip and adopt it.

A huge issue here in California is how to continue to operate the courts in these times. Different counties have taken different approaches in how to continue to operate. Attorneys are frustrated as to the lack of clarity. Now is the time for uniformity and not each county going off in its own direction. Fifty-eight counties and fifty-eight different ways of doing things? Never a good idea, especially now.

Chaos has reigned in the court system here in California, the largest trial court system in the country. Are courts open or closed? Every day? Limited hours? Or no hours? Are they handling all kinds of cases or only those requiring emergency assistance?

The criminal justice system does not have an off switch, neither does the domestic violence restraining order courtroom, as well as others essential to health and safety. Civil cases can wait.

Now all cases will wait as the Chief Justice issued an order on Monday that all cases, civil and criminal, are delayed for sixty days. All the courts in the fifty-eight counties are on the same page. Hooray!!

I made a list of some of the collateral consequences that I could think of. I know this list is incomplete, and I am just focusing on legal issues:

• What about LSAT testing?
• What about the July bar? Bar review?
• Tolling agreements for expired or expiring statutes of limitations?
• Most banks, if not all, require that the applicable documents be recorded before a loan can be funded. What if the recorder’s office is closed? How will real property closings be handled? What about payment defaults? Non-monetary defaults? I see a lot of forbearance agreements in the future.
• Graduations, marriages, funerals, and all manner of gatherings are kaput for right now. Celebrations of any sort prohibited.
• Layoffs. They are now starting in our profession, but the economy has already decimated many businesses. I don’t need to recite what they are; everyone knows or should know. I doubt if these law firm layoffs will be the last. Hopefully, there won’t be a tsunami of layoffs, but it’s way too soon to tell.

I am under a “stay at home” order issued by California governor, Gavin Newsom. A number of other states have imposed similar orders. What am I doing? Reading, cleaning closets, shredding documents, participating in webinars and learning how to use Zoom, getting some fresh air sitting on my front porch, cooking (huh?), figuring out what I am going to write about as this is not a time for snark, ordering from local restaurants in my small effort to keep my favorite places going right now. It’s entirely possible that I could get most, if not all, my CLE credits for the next reporting period while home.

On the positive side (is there one?) the more work that can be done remotely, the better and less expensive for the client. Yesterday’s webinar was about online mediation practice, an idea whose time has already come. I thought that years ago, but I wasn’t quick enough on the uptake to pursue it.

This is also a time to connect or reconnect with friends and colleagues while practicing social distancing. Social media and there’s something to be said for old-fashioned phone calls, Skype, FaceTime, Zoom, and the like.

There’s work and lots of it prompted by COVID-19. (Am I the only use inundated with law firm newsletters?) The number of issues that arise as a result of COVID-19 is mind-boggling, at least to me. Labor and employment, privacy and data security, contracts, real property, deal-making and deal-breaking, and of course, the bread and butter for many lawyers: family law and estate planning, the latter which does take on a ghoulish hue right now. What to do when you’re in the middle of a nasty divorce and the warring parties are still sharing the family home?

There should be more time now to spend with family, if not in the throes of an ugly divorce. More time to spend with kids home from school. Screw the billables; there are way more important things than that and if any time illustrates the illusory nature of billables, it’s now. Remember that there are no pockets in a shroud.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out and best wishes to David Lat, who will hopefully make a full recovery from COVID-19. David gave me the chance to write for ATL, which I had always loved for its irreverent, take no prisoners, snarky attitude about our foibles and follies. Get well soon, kiddo. In deference to you, I am trying not to write snark now.

I hate not writing snark.

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Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

Last week, I wrote about the latest intense challenges to surrogacy in the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Essentially, most in vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy has stopped. So unfortunately, that’s the end of assisted reproductive technology in the United States, for now, with narrow exceptions for urgent treatments and those already in progress.

OK, great -– growing families is important, but so is keeping everyone as safe as possible in unprecedented times. However, for all the surrogacy pregnancies currently in progress, the reality of the situation doesn’t conform to our new shelter-in-place world. Unsurprisingly, we are seeing some of the most difficult challenges for new families where the intended parents have an American surrogate, but are themselves neither US citizens nor live in the United States.

No Way Home

On March, 20, 2020, the State Department reduced passport services operations. Specifically, passport services (aka the ability to receive a US passport) would only be offered to those with a qualified life-or-death emergency and who need a US passport for immediate international travel. “Life-or-death emergencies” are defined here as “serious illness, injuries, or deaths in your immediate family (e.g. parent, child, spouse, sibling, aunt, uncle, etc.) that require you to travel outside the United States within 72 hours.”

Under normal circumstances, international parents to a child born via a United States surrogate would travel to the surrogate’s location in time for the birth, and be there to take care of their child immediately upon its coming into the world. They would spend a few weeks in the United States with their newborn while waiting to receive their child’s birth certificate and then a US passport. (Babies born in the United States, regardless of the birth being via surrogacy, are, of course, entitled to citizenship.) Once the passport is received, the happy family would return home. However, what used to be a fairly straightforward process has become extremely difficult for some, at best, and an impossibility for others.

I spoke with Marc Gilland of Passport/Visa Advisors, a visa and passport specialist who frequently works with parents through surrogacy to obtain expedited passports for their children to return home quickly. Gilland painted a grim picture of numerous clients in rough positions. He is seeing many parents being denied a hearing to obtain their children’s passports based on the “life-or-death” limited services.

Gilland described one couple from the United Kingdom whose surrogate went into labor in January with twins ten weeks early. One parent immediately left for the United States to be there for the delivery. The babies have been in the neonatal intensive care unit since birth and are finally ready to be discharged and able to go in person (as required) to apply for US passports. However, with the new limitation on passport services, they have not been able to apply. And, in the meantime, the other parent in the United Kingdom is unable to travel to the United States. The family is forced to remain apart until the travel suspension is lifted or the US Passport Agency considers their situation “life-or-death.”

In good news, one family was able — with the help of attorneys and the involvement of at least one state senator — to get a passport appointment and argue successfully that getting home was, indeed, a life-or-death emergency. However, Gilland explained the extreme cost and logistical hurdles the parents faced. In order to prove that they would be returning home within 72 hours, the parents had to find and purchase flights to take them home (not an easy task these days). Gilland said the clients found flights for the family (yay!), but they cost close to $60,000!

In another exceptional success story, attorney Taylor Rolf of Steven H. Snyder and Associates in Minnesota was able to assist Swiss parents of surrogate-born twins to successfully navigate the “life-or-death” passport process last Friday. Their application was supported by a signed written letter from a doctor affiliated with the children. The doctor affirmed the necessity for the children to be able to obtain a passport to allow them to  travel home the next day to receive vital and necessary medical care in the parents’ home country due to the fact that the children were no longer able to obtain US health insurance once the court proceeding establishing parental rights occurred. The letter also pointed out that if unable to return home, the children would remain in the United States for an indeterminate amount of time without access to covered medical care. Additionally, without a passport to return home with their children, the parents (or at least one parent) would have no choice but to overstay their visa to the United States.

Some international parents with surrogate-born children have not been so lucky. Attorney Robin Pope of Oregon spoke with representatives of the NW passport agency, and was told, in no uncertain terms, that international parents unable to return home with their newborns was not a qualifying emergency. Pope is working with Oregon Senator Ron Wyden’s office, whose staffers understand the depths of the situation and are working to provide assistance. Without allowing these families to return home: (1) both the newborns and the parents will add to the burden of the United States healthcare system (not a good time for that!); (2) most of the international parents do not have medical insurance for themselves applicable to the United States healthcare system, and most do not have it for their newborns, further increasing the burden on the United States healthcare system; and (3) parents who are unable to return home with their child will be in jeopardy of violating the terms of their United States’ visas, placing their families at further risk.

At Least Those Families Are Together

Of course, those stuck in the United States with their children are, in a way, the lucky ones, like Indiana Jones rolling under the rapidly closing door just before it seals shut. Other parents can’t even make it into the United States to be with their newborn babies.

Pope explained that she had several clients where the parents are unable to obtain authorization to travel to the United States. She described a parent in China who has been denied entry, and has still not been able to meet his child who was born in February. Fortunately, the grandparents of another surrogate-born child — that child being unable to meet their parents either — is taking care of both babies for the time. Give those grandparents a medal!

I also spoke with Paris-based French attorney Fabien Joly. Joly described the complicated situation for French parents desperately trying to make it to their children. One set of parents appeared at the Paris airport with a US court order showing that they are the parents of a child imminently due to be born in California. They were turned away from their flight by US authorities with the explanation that without a birth certificate for the (currently unborn) child, they had failed to prove that they were parents to a child in the United States, and did not meet an exception to the travel ban.

These are rough times. For all. Here’s hoping that all the drastic measures work to flatten the curve and save lives. In the meantime, however, it would be nice to find a creative solution in the best interest of everyone’s safety, but still able to help these stranded and separated families.

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Ellen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, and co-host of the podcast I Want To Put A Baby In You. You can reach her at babies@abovethelaw.com.

 

[O]n Sunday, the 22nd, I got the call that I had tested positive. I was honestly relieved, because at that point I had spun myself into, was I being dramatic? Was I insane? I’m just really happy I didn’t go home to be with my parents.

I ended up posting a message on my Instagram story that I had tested positive. There’s a shift in people when it begins to affect their social circles. You really do need to take it seriously. I can go back outside when my symptoms have subsided for seven days, so Saturday, but I’ll still be social distancing. It was a relief knowing I did the right thing.

— Sarah Moore, a third-year student at Boston College Law School, sharing her experience of what it was like to get sick with coronavirus. Moore reports that after a week spent in Ireland for spring break, she came down with a fever and began to have difficulty breathing. She found it difficult to get tested for COVID-19 despite her symptoms.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Living in the midst of a global pandemic is stressful. Misinformation abounds, purchasing toilet paper feels like a victory, and the coronavirus continues to wreak its devastation. Faced with unprecedented circumstances, law school educators are doing their best to make online education a thing, and students are, perhaps rightly, concerned about the potential impact on their GPAs.

The trend, particularly among elite law schools, has been to move to pass/fail grading. It takes some of the pressure off of students who are dealing with a whole host of real world ish that makes learning the rule against perpetuities even more challenging than usual. But it is not without its negative consequences. As long as the timetable for Biglaw summer associate jobs remains the same (interviewing begins in summer/fall), students at schools that implement pass/fail systems will be judged solely on one semester’s grades, a move that can dramatically impact the summer associate opportunities students have. (Note: Columbia Law has moved their on-campus interview program to January 2021 to give students a second semester of grades to show Biglaw firms.)

But despite potential issues, pass/fail seems to be where top law schools are going. As Berkeley Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky said, the pass/fail system is the “fairest, most compassionate, and most equitable” way to deal with the upheaval surrounding COVID-19.

But that’s not what’s happening at University of Chicago Law School. The law school, which is on a quarter system and about to start spring quarter, announced yesterday they were keeping the curve — at least for now. From Dean Tom Miles’s email announcing the policy:

As we approach the new quarter, I and our faculty and administrators have given a great deal of thought to how to approach grading in a world where it is critically important that we continue to deliver excellent education. To that end, we intend at this time to maintain the status quo on grades at the Law School for the Spring Quarter. We will continue to watch developments in the next few weeks, and will make adjustments if the situation warrants.

I sincerely hope that the many steps that have been taken both at our University and around the world will help to “flatten the curve” and hasten the end of this difficult period. I hope that our online learning environment will quickly become comfortable for everyone involved and that its growing familiarity will make this decision about grading feel like just another part of that. One of the benefits of being part of a small, intimate community is that we can adjust swiftly if that proves not to be the case.

And the immediate response Above the Law has received from students there has not been positive:

UChicago Law admin just told us they’re keeping standard grading system in place for spring quarter. We’re now the only T6 school to still have grades. Please expose them for continuing to be the most out of touch law school in the country.

Another tipster pointed us to a petition — signed by 247 law students — which pointed out that as a school on a quarter system, Chicago Law students already have two sets of grades available for recruitment purposes and that students who are already dealing with the biggest impacts from the pandemic are the most disadvantaged by keeping the curve:

We understand that this switch may complicate calculations for scholarship awards, journal placement, and rankings. However, we believe this impact is outweighed by the number of students who will be disproportionately affected by this grave and evolving situation. Due to the nature of our quarter system, all students already have two or more quarters of standard-issue grades under the current system. However, many students may not have the time or capacity to think about class rank or graduation awards in the midst of this international pandemic. Furthermore, under the current system, students have reason to be unsure about health and academic outcomes if they contract the virus. This is particularly concerning for our peers who have chronic illnesses, are immunocompromised, and may need to take more protective measures than others. There are also many students, some with disabilities, who have voiced that the adjustment to distance learning has further complicated challenges they already face with concentration and other aspects of the traditional classroom environment. Some of these issues may also apply to students forced to return home to a different time zone. These concerns are exacerbated by the expectation of live classes and the agreement clause included in the Law School survey administered to assess remote teaching needs, which prohibits students from downloading or personally recording any online lectures.

Tipsters also pointed to the perceived lack of compassion in the law school’s announcement:

[T]he law school sent out an email today that is summed up by: “We don’t see how any of you could be facing challenges severe enough to merit any change to the law school curve. If more people contract the virus and die, we may reassess.” They are also committed to making case-by-case exceptions even when students with disabilities and other disadvantages know they cannot rely on the “kindness” or “empathy” of professors. Exams are, after all, graded blindly and on a nondiscretionary curve.

And they had pithy comments about the competitive concerns about the job market:

Clearly, UChicago knows something they don’t or has very little faith in its students to stand out in the job market (the #1 concern of admin and faculty) without arbitrarily assigned numbers.

While it’s undoubtedly a difficult situation, the comments we’ve received so far show the members of the Chicago admin have put their finger on the wrong side of the scale. But we haven’t heard from everyone. Are you at Chicago (or another law school keeping grading the same amid COVID-19)? Feel free to sound off by email, by text message (646-820-8477), or by tweet (@ATLblog). A fun or insightful response — we’ll keep you anonymous — could find its way into an update to this story.

Read the full email from the dean on the next page.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

School’s out, probably for the spring and summer, possibly forever. B-schools are trying (and failing) to justify their existence in absence of their real raison d’être, networking through the medium of alcohol. The SAT’s cancelled and Advanced Placement exams have been turned into online tests of how well students can cheat in 45 minutes. University exams have either been called off or turned into opportunities for academic dishonesty.

Given all of the above, and given what good boys and girls they’ve been, and despite their eagerness to totally crush the now very-easily-crushable Federal Reserve stress tests, America’s biggest banks are wondering if they can’t just get practical credit for this year’s exams.

Twenty-first century politics has been a tug-of-war between “We’re all in this together” and “You’re on your own, Jack.” It’s no secret which side of that rope Donald Trump has been pulling for most of his presidency.

The only age group John McCain won in the 2008 election was the over-65 crowd (to be fair, a lot of those who were over 65 in 2008 are no longer with us). In 2012, apparently outraged that Obamacare was helping get healthcare to people who weren’t old enough to qualify for Medicare yet, a majority of those older than 65 voted for Mitt Romney (he won that age group by 12 points). Among validated voters in the 2016 election, even though Clinton won the most votes overall by three points, the 65-plus crowd preferred Trump over Clinton, 53 percent to 44 percent.

As of early 2020, there was majority support for “Medicare for All.” Guess which age group had the lowest level of support for Medicare for All though? Among those 65 and older (who already have regular Medicare for themselves, of course), only 35 percent supported Medicare for All — 55 percent opposed it.

A graph with level of support for cancelling student loan debt on the y-axis and with age on the x-axis is a quarter pipe skateboard ramp. It’s worth remembering that today a student comes out of law school with something like $123,511 in student loan debt, but law school tuition in the mid-1980s was about $2,000 a semester and could be largely paid off in real time with a decent part-time job.

A 2019 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll found overwhelming majorities of Millennials and Gen-Xers thought “a Green New Deal to address climate change by investing government money in green jobs and energy efficient infrastructure” was a good idea. Substantially fewer baby boomers and their surviving elders supported the idea, although more people in every age group supported a Green New Deal than opposed it. Good job on that one anyway, most old people.

You get the idea. While there are always substantial minorities of older Americans who support progressive policies that, versus the status quo, would disproportionately benefit younger Americans, the collective level of support among older Americans is almost always the lowest of any age group for any policy that would help younger people more than themselves.

Meanwhile, the health effects of coronavirus have been borne extremely disproportionately by older Americans. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report looking at over 4,200 US cases reported from February 12 to March 16. Approximately 80 percent of COVID-19 deaths occurred in people 65 and older. Not a single child died during that period. More than half of the coronavirus patients who wound up in intensive care units were 65 or older. Not one coronavirus sufferer under the age of 19 was admitted to an intensive care unit from February 12 to March 16. The report mirrors findings in other countries that have been dealing with coronavirus longer than the United States has. Based on research on the death toll in Wuhan, China, where the virus began, the fatality rate for those with symptomatic COVID-19 appeared to be about 0.5 percent for those aged 15 to 64, but about 2.7 percent for those over 64. The chances of those younger than 15 being seriously harmed were so low that scientists estimated a fatality rate of zero for that age group.

There are plenty of examples of coronavirus felling people younger than 65, I get that it’s a real threat to everyone, please don’t write me angry emails. Still, anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of probability realizes that coronavirus is a way, way bigger threat to people 65 and older than to anyone younger, and the threat gets less serious the younger you are.

In response to this threat — almost exclusively a threat to old people — we have closed schools, shuttered bars and restaurants, utterly destroyed a good economy (to largely benefit people who are mostly retired and no longer working in it), and put a complete stop to public gatherings of any kind throughout nearly the entire country (getting together is a constitutionally safeguarded right, by the way). People like me in their mid-30s aren’t doing all this to protect ourselves. If a maybe one-percent chance of encountering my own death scared me, I probably wouldn’t ride around on a motorcycle all summer. No, we’re doing all this for our elders, especially those over the age of 65.

So, if you’re an antiprogressive older American, and you don’t die from coronavirus over the next year, maybe recognize the sacrifices the rest of us are making, for you, and show us some goddamn respect for a change. Consider that in the voting booth this fall too and support some policies that will actually make the earth a better place for the generations that follow you.

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Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

As the spring semester begins to draw to a close, with commencement almost upon us, third-year students are usually looking out to their futures in the legal profession with hope and excitement. We’d normally be compiling our annual list of the most prestigious and powerful commencement speakers. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, this is no normal year, and nothing is proceeding as usual.

With the health and safety of students and families at hand, law school commencements are now being postponed, leading to extreme frustration and disappointment for those who have worked so hard for the past three (or four) years to reach this achievement. We’re so sorry that it had to happen this way.

While some of the nation’s most prestigious law schools are opting for virtual commencement exercises (like Harvard) and delayed celebrations (like Georgetown), others’ plans are unclear at this time due to woefully out-of-date websites (like Yale).

What is your law school planning to do for its 2020 commencement? Please email us or text us (646-820-8477) and let us know.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.