Author: TSA Press

Earlier today, we reported that a New York lawyer was the second confirmed case of coronavirus in the state. We can now confirm that one of his children is an undergraduate student at Yeshiva University in New York City and that a student at Cardozo Law has been put into self-quarantine due to contact with the coronavirus patient’s law firm.

At about 2:30 p.m., an alert went out to the Yeshiva University community to let them know that the student in question had not been on campus since Thursday, February 27, and is in quarantine with the rest of his family. The school is working with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response to ensure everyone’s safety.

Cardozo Law Dean Melanie Leslie quickly followed up on that email with a message to the law school community, attempting to keep everyone calm:

I am writing to follow up on the University’s alert regarding the Cardozo student who is in voluntary quarantine. The student has no symptoms of the illness and has been assessed by the New York City Department of Health, which has told the student that they are likely not in any danger and do not need to be quarantined. In an abundance of caution, the student decided to remain in their home for the time being.

Nonetheless, we are in the process of disinfecting the building. We will also begin recording classes.

“I want to assure you that we are vigilantly monitoring the situation, and that the University is working very closely with the state and local health officials,” Dean Leslie said. “Please remember that most cases of the Corona virus are not life-threatening.”

We will be closely following these latest developments. What is your law school or law firm doing to protect students and employees from coronavirus? Please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “Coronavirus Response”). Stay safe, everyone.

(Flip to the next page to see Dean Leslie’s message in full.)

Earlier: This Lawyer Has New York’s Second Confirmed Case Of Coronavirus

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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.

The Februrary 2020 administration of the bar exam has officially come and gone, and now there is nothing left for would-be lawyers to do but await their pass/fail fates. Here’s something to distract recent test-takers while they play the months-long waiting game and make other members of the legal profession gasp as they take in the abject horror of a truly frightening bar exam nightmare.

This tale of terror comes from a familiar face to Above the Law. You may remember Kay Lorraine as the oldest woman to graduate from University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law at the age of 70. Here is her story:

I am now 73, and I had a mild stroke during the morning of day one of last week’s bar exam. I have taken the bar exam a couple of times (it’s rough to retain huge amounts of info when you are in your 70s). In 2018, I withdrew from the bar exam in order to fly to Texas to work pro bono for nearly 8 months with RAICES, reuniting children with immigrant families.

I went into the February 2020 bar exam feeling pretty confident. I had hired a tutor and I was relaxed and ready to go. Unfortunately, about 35 minutes in, I had a Transient Ischemic Attack (which is not terribly uncommon but mine lasted for about an hour and 40 minutes, which is uncommon). I went to Straub Emergency Room and they took good care of me.

I also fully intend to take the July bar exam and, damn it, I intend to pass.

According to the American Stroke Association, a TIA stroke is “a temporary blockage of blood flow to the brain” with warning signs that couldn’t possibly have boded well for someone who was in the middle of taking the bar exam:

• Weakness, numbness, or paralysis on one side of the body
• Slurred speech or difficulty understanding others
• Blindness in one or both eyes
• Dizziness
• Severe headache with no apparent cause

We wish Kay good health and the best of luck on the bar exam this summer. Please let this serve as a reminder to take care of yourselves before, during, and after the test.

What was the craziest thing that happened during the February 2020 bar exam? If you survived or witnessed some horror story in action, let us know. You can email it to us (subject line: “Bar Exam Horror Story”) or text us (646-820-8477).

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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.

The death of a loved one is often the beginning of multiple court filings and appearances.
This is the case for basketball legend Kobe Bryant, who also was the subject of various court
proceedings during his lifetime. Bryant passed away with his daughter Gigi on January 26, 2020, in a Calabasas, California, helicopter crash that killed all nine people onboard.

If someone dies with assets held in his own name, a last will and testament is filed with the local probate court in order to distribute the estate in accordance with that last will. If someone passes away with children and there is no surviving parent or guardian, the probate court will address
issues of personal and financial guardianship for any minors. Whether Kobe
Bryant died without a last will and testament, a living trust, or another
testamentary vehicle to dispose of his assets upon his death remains unclear.
If the decedent dies as a result of someone else, there may be a cause of action to be asserted on his behalf. In many cases, an executor or other personal representative must be appointed by a court to assert that claim, or a surviving spouse or child can put it forward. This is often the case
if someone dies as a result of a car crash, shooting, or any kind of accident. When a person dies as the result of the wrongful act or negligence of another, a wrongful death claim can be filed in civil court. The personal representative or family sues for monetary damages, which if granted are paid to the decedent’s survivors. Sometimes an estate can sue for personal injury damages on behalf of the decedent, if it is thought he suffered injury immediately prior to death. In that case, the damages are paid to his estate.

In Los Angeles County Superior Court, Vanessa Bryant — Kobe Bryant’s widow and the mother of Gigi — has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Island Express Holding Corp. and Island Express Helicopters, the companies that operated the helicopter. The complaint argues that pilot Ara Zobayan was negligent and failed “to use ordinary care in piloting the subject aircraft.” Specifically the defendant “directed and/or permitted” the fatal flight, knowing that there was unsafe weather. It has been alleged that the flying conditions on the day of the crash were unsafe and particularly that it was too foggy to fly.

Vanessa Bryant has retained Kansas City, Missouri, attorney, Gary Robb,
who practices in helicopter crash litigation and has written a book regarding the topic. Robb has spoken of an allegation that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department disseminated photos from the crash site. Bryant had personally requested that the crash site be marked as a no-fly zone and that photographers not be able to gain access. Allegedly the Sheriff’s Department gave assurances that they would work to protect the privacy of the victims’ families. News outlets, however, have reported that deputies shared photos of the crash site. Bryant has demanded an investigation. On her Instagram account, Bryant called reports that first responders shared photos of the crash site “inexcusable and deplorable.” The argument is that the sharing of such photos is a violation of human decency and also a violation of the victims and families’ privacy rights.

In this day and age when information, including photos are so easily disseminated via email and the internet, issues of decency and privacy are sure to abound. Additionally, Kobe Bryant’s larger-than-life status and the circumstances of his death pervade all people’s newsfeeds. In these cases, however, it is important to be mindful that this tragedy, like all deaths, still concerns several individuals and families. Surely Kobe Bryant’s fame and death will be the impetus for many legal and ethical conversations as his family and fans navigate life without him.

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Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com.

The bar exam. Few things invoke a stronger reaction in law students, and not in a good way. There’s no getting around the fact that sufficiently preparing to pass the bar is an intense, time-consuming process. But thanks to Crushendo, founded by BYU Law grad Adam Balinski, it no longer has to be a boring one.

For decades, bar prep services have relied on primarily two main methods for delivering the information they think you need to know to pass the exam: long, talking-head lectures and outlines so voluminous they could serve as doorstops. Even as law students have seen more bar prep options enter the market, they haven’t seen much change in the way study materials are structured.

Until now. Crushendo is changing the bar prep game with audio and visual outlines that are accessible and engaging. Combine that with online flashcards, practice questions, and prices that won’t break the bank, and Crushendo is turning the bar prep industry on its head.

A New Approach to the Traditional Outline

Crushendo’s whole approach to bar prep is to help you memorize crucial information faster. This starts with informative, visually appealing outlines that are easy to digest and accompanied by audio.

The outlines provide convenient breakdowns of how often certain topics tend to be tested on the bar exam. From there, each topic is presented in discrete, logical chunks through the help of hundreds of proprietary mnemonics, color-coding, and illustrations. The idea here is to instill visual images that are easy to recall come testing time.

There are mnemonics for almost everything, and they have a handy color-coding system to aid with memorization. Mnemonics presented in green (or avocado) imply “and” logic, meaning all elements are required (“avocado” = “a” = “and”). Those in orange involve “or” logic (“orange” = “o” = “or”). If a mnemonic is simply a list without relational logic, it appears in black.

The outlines also include handy blue hyperlinks that will take you to many of the underlying cases or statutes.

As cool and engaging as these outlines are, they’re just the beginning. The real game changer is when the audio comes in. Crushendo intends for their outlines to be read in full as a first step, but you have options for how you do this, depending on your personal preferences.

If you’re a studier who can’t stand noise, you should read your outline for the first time in complete silence at your own pace. For those who can tolerate, or even prefer, background music, you’ve got two options – you can read along as the written outline is paired with an audio outline, or you can also add classical background music to the mix (each subject has its own optional background song). The key is finding the right level of audio engagement that works best for you.

After you’ve digested the whole outline once, your Crushendo bar prep experience allows you to listen to each section of each outline as an audio file any time, anywhere. Throw on a torts track while hitting the weights at the gym. Listen to the civil procedure course while you’re grocery shopping. Or if you’re like this Google reviewer, you can even use Crushendo to increase your quality time with your pets: 

“I became instantly hooked by Crushendo’s use of mnemonics, concise outlines, and their tips and tricks from ONE YouTube video, that I had to get their MPRE package. It was the best decision ever. Although I had already purchased an MPRE outline from a popular bar company, it was simply not helping me memorize rule statements. Now, with Crushendo, I am able to go on my hour-long walks with my husky and be repeating the audio outlines, with awesomely vivid mnemonics, and feel like the rule statements are sticking! I have already recommended Crushendo to several classmates and can’t wait to buy their UBE package. Thank you, Crushendo!!”

The idea is to listen to each and every track 7-10 times so you eventually memorize all the concepts in convenient chunks. The combination of the information and music, especially when paired with mindless, enjoyable activities (stress relief, anyone?), is the best way to cement your knowledge of the concepts that will help you to pass the big exam.

Most bar prep products are designed to be used exclusively for that – studying come bar time. That’s why you get sold on expensive courses (more on that in a bit) and don’t see any materials till much later. Crushendo is different.

You get the materials right away, and you can use them throughout your law school experience to gain a deeper understanding of black letter law that will help you through your courses and finals, not just the bar exam itself. Take it from one successful Facebook user:

“I used Crushendo’s Civil Procedure outline during 1L and received my best grade in law school in Civil Procedure. I now listen to Evidence and Criminal Procedure during my daily commute and the repetition and the mnemonics are real game changers. If you commute and want to make that time more productive, you NEED Crushendo!”

Praise doesn’t get much better than that. (And speaking of Facebook, Crushendo gets an impressive 5 out of 5 stars).

Beyond Outlines (Stop! CrammerTime)

The Crushendo experience doesn’t end with the audio outlines and visual outlines. You also get compelling audio flashcards and online visual flashcards to help you further visualize and cement key concepts, as well as loads of official practice questions to prepare for the big day.

Flashcards are a great way to drill down those mnemonics and help with chunking – putting the right concepts in the right buckets so you’ll better remember them. With Crushendo, you get your flashcards in audio format, dubbed “CrammerTime,” accompanied (or not) by classical music tracks, according to your preference.

The final piece of any bar prep puzzle is practice questions, and Crushendo has you covered. Crushendo provides over 2000 practice questions, which they get directly from the NCBE itself – the folks who produce the Uniform Bar Exam – so you know they’re more reliable than many of the things you’ll randomly find on the internet. Even better, the essays and MPTs come with the actual bar grader reference point sheets, so you’re getting the best possible feedback instantly on your practice answers.

And since convenience is everything, all your Crushendo materials are available on both your computer and mobile devices. There’s even a blog and creative videos for more tips and tricks for surviving the bar. It’s hard to imagine how Crushendo could make bar prep any easier.

The Most Enjoyable Way to Crush Bar Prep

Crushendo is different than any other bar prep course you’ll come across, and that’s a great thing. The bar exam may be a rite of passage that will stand the test of time, but study materials have long needed to catch up with the modern age.  That’s exactly what Crushendo has done.

Whether you’re preparing for law school finals, the UBE (or any its subparts – MBE, MEE, or MPT), your state bar exam, or the MPRE, Crushendo is the flexible study system that gives you the freedom to study and cram when and where you want. You get lifetime access to your materials for a fraction of the cost of any other equally comprehensive study program, and there’s even financing available if you need it. There’s also a 30-day, no-questions-asked, money-back trial period for you to test it out (though if you’re like 98% of their users, you won’t change your mind).

Let’s face it. The bar exam will always be hard and prepping for it will always be a ton of work. But it doesn’t have to be miserable. Break free from the lectures and outlines, and let Crushendo guide you to a more flexible, engaging, and effective study experience.

Breastfeeding is a hot-button issue in the world of mommy blogs. There’s mom-shaming on both sides of the issue as everyone just wants to feel like the decision they made about feeding their kids is the correct one — both for themselves and the rest of the world. But what is frequently ignored is the way in which breastfeeding or formula feeding has historically been construed to align with antiblackness.

In the latest episode of The Jabot podcast, I talk with University of Hawaii at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law professor Andrea Freeman. We discuss her new book, Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice which tells the heartbreaking story of the Fultz Quads, the first known identical African-American quadruplets. Their birth was seen as an opportunity for riches for the doctor who delivered them, then quickly stole the right to name them and used the girls for his medical experiments. That injustice has a throughline that can still be felt today.

The Jabot podcast is an offshoot of the Above the Law brand focused on the challenges women, people of color, LGBTQIA, and other diverse populations face in the legal industry. Our name comes from none other than the Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the jabot (decorative collar) she wears when delivering dissents from the bench. It’s a reminder that even when we aren’t winning, we’re still a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Happy listening!

Law firms and corporate legal operations departments have an overwhelming abundance of choice when it comes to selecting eDiscovery software solutions. With so many vendors and program capabilities to choose from, how are legal professionals supposed to compare and contrast their strengths and weaknesses?

There are five essential questions that must be asked to determine which eDiscovery solution is the right one for your needs:

1. Is security the top priority?
2. Is the organization transparent?
3. What is the pace of innovation?
4. Is there an affinity for speed?
5. Are users respected?

In a new white paper from Everlaw, you can take a deep dive into learning about why these difficult questions must be answered before making a final eDiscovery decision.

Fill out the form below to view now!

For 10 days, while the markets were cratering as if they themselves had contracted a very serious case of coronavirus, Fed officials made all of their Fed-y reassuring mouth sounds: We’re keeping an eye on things, we’ll do something if it’s warranted, but it’s not yet, so just calm down. And then the markets did, soaring yesterday and continuing that rise today. At least until, after watching everyone else—including the White House, which although it wants to make clear thinks this whole China-virus or whatever things is totally overblown and invented like climate change to hurt the Dear Leader, did think that Jay Powell & co. were doing their typically horrible job containing a thing that Larry Kudlow said was already contained and oh yea doesn’t exist anyway—overreact for a week and a half, the Fed decided it would like to go a little nuts itself.

Ever since New York confirmed its first official coronavirus infection on March 1, we knew it would only be a matter of time until community spread began. Just days later, the state confirmed its first community spread case of coronavirus — and person who was infected is a lawyer.

NBC 4 New York has the details:

An attorney who lives in Westchester County and works in Manhattan is New York state’s second confirmed coronavirus case … the governor said Tuesday.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said an initial review of the 50-year-old man’s travels doesn’t suggest any travel to China or other countries at the nexus of the outbreak so authorities are looking at it as a possible case of person-to-person spread. He has been with his family in Westchester, so health officials are testing relatives and working to backtrace any other contacts for risk. That includes coordination with the schools his children attend.

The man, who has an underlying respiratory illness, experienced respiratory issues and was diagnosed at a hospital in the city on Monday, the first day the city was able to conduct such rapid testing locally, Mayor Bill de Blasio added. The man remains hospitalized in serious condition in Manhattan. At this point, authorities are working to trace how he got there from Westchester County, including whether he may have used mass transit.

It’s also been reported that the schools the lawyer’s children attend — SAR Academy and SAR High School, located in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx — closed today due to a “suspected case of coronavirus.”

Who is this man, and which law firm does he work for? Please please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “Coronavirus Lawyer”) if you have any ideas.

In the meantime, there are steps you can take to try to protect yourselves from contracting COVID-19. Here are some recommendations from the CDC:

• Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
• Stay home when you are sick.
• Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
• Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
  • If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol. Always wash hands with soap and water if hands are visibly dirty.

We know law firms have stepped up to protect their employees, but please make sure you take care of yourselves to avoid catching this illness. Stay safe out there, everyone.

Coronavirus News: Positive case of COVID-19 in Westchester County, 1st community spread in state [ABC 7 New York]
Westchester County Man Tests Positive for Coronavirus in NY’s 1st Possible Community Spread Case [NBC 4 New York]

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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.

Bernie Sanders says a lot of stuff out there on the campaign trail to fire up his supporters.

At a recent event in Los Angeles, he hit on an issue that’s a high priority for both civil libertarians and criminal justice reform advocates alike: marijuana legalization.

The reaction from the more sanctimonious sectors of Legal Twitter started ripping Sanders for not understanding legal basics. There were a lot of cracks about how executive authority works and administrative law and even federalism. What most of these folks missed though was that Sanders is… mostly right about all of this.

While it may pain lawyers and quasi-lawyers, the first step to untangling the Sanders position is getting past semantics. Can a president legalize drugs by “Executive Order”? Not really. Can a president, through his or her executive authority, order this to happen? Yeah, pretty much. Once you’re not hung up on the Executive Order term of art this isn’t particularly controversial. The Controlled Substances Act defers authority to the Executive Branch to determine where specific drugs are scheduled and, by extension, just how much of a federal crime you’re committing when you’re using.

Specifically, the law defers authority to the Attorney General to “remove a drug or other substance entirely from the schedules.” That said, wholesale removal would trigger an international law wrinkle. There are a number of international conventions that place the United States under an obligation to keep marijuana controlled. Now, the Trump administration tried to pull the U.S. out of the Universal Postal Union — the treaty that controls international mail standards! So it’s not like the precedent isn’t set to walk out on those obligations.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s say Sanders wasn’t interested in continuing the White House’s blanket disregard for international law. As it turns out, the Controlled Substances Act also accounts for this, noting that “if control is required by United States obligations under international treaties, conventions, or protocols in effect on October 27, 1970, the Attorney General shall issue an order controlling such drug under the schedule he deems most appropriate.” So we’ve run aground on the rocky shores of semantics again. Sanders is likely hamstrung from “legalizing” marijuana by removing it as a controlled substance. However, turning pot into the equivalent of cough suppressants? Very within his power and something the rest of the country would commonly understand as “legalization.”

An administrative rescheduling is a time-consuming process, but ultimately a pretty straightforward one. Sanders critics on social media kept pointing to a Brookings article for the proposition that rescheduling drugs is so onerous as to be nearly impossible. Actually reading the article though, it’s woefully misplaced in the context of the Sanders argument. It provides a compelling explanation for why the Obama administration would be unlikely to reschedule marijuana which is fascinating yet irrelevant to the question of whether or not a Sanders administration could do so. Sure there are inter-agency studies to do and all the usual trappings of rulemaking to clear administrative law hurdles, but that’s not a prohibitive bar.

At one point, the authors note that a big problem crossing the Ts on the rule-making process would be:

These choices are ultimately made by presidential appointees and others sensitive to political considerations. The politics surrounding administrative rescheduling are unfavorable. It is not a policy priority of the Obama administration.

Yeah, no kidding.

The Sanders appointees serving in a hypothetical administration where he won on this platform would probably sing a different tune. This doesn’t provide any inherent barrier to Sanders administration action.

Some critics zeroed in on the “massive” federalism problem of the federal government functionally overruling state criminal laws against marijuana. It is certainly a problem and likely one that the presently constituted judiciary would make insurmountable, but it’s unfair to call it massive. Indeed, if the federal courts cared about “precedent,” this imaginary Sanders administration would have a pretty good argument, especially if we assume marijuana isn’t “uncontrolled” but rather “reclassified.” The FDA and the states have a long-running battle over who rules the roost when it comes to federal preemption.

Recently, states have started cracking down on opioids. And while states have gotten away with tightening pharmacy restrictions and the like, efforts to outright ban pharmaceuticals have run smack into the FDA claiming “we approved it, so you can’t ban it.” It’s hard to see how the Sanders administration fight with the states over this wouldn’t track the facts of these these opioid cases.

But, yeah, he can’t unilaterally make states expunge state criminal records. So there he was totally wrong. So yeah, let’s throw the whole thing out.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Sorry, folks, but I’m afraid it’s here: the recession. We’ve had a good run, some 128 months of economic expansion — more than a decade, the longest expansion on record. But all good things must come to an end.

Dating economic cycles is by its nature retrospective, so we won’t know that we’re officially in a recession until the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) says so. But if I had to bet, I would wager that we are currently in, or about to enter, an economic downturn.

When we look back, this recession will probably be regarded as the “Coronavirus Recession” (or, if you want to be more technical about it, the “Covid-19 Recession”). The worldwide outbreak of coronavirus and the steps taken to combat it are having a serious effect on the global economy, as reflected in the plummeting equity markets (yesterday’s nice little rally notwithstanding).

And as Neil Irwin and others have pointed out, this recession will be especially difficult to address because it involves a “supply shock,” i.e., “a reduction in the economy’s capacity to make things,” as opposed to a “demand shock,” a dip in demand that can be addressed through the conventional tools of monetary and fiscal policy. These tools are already more limited in their power than usual, in light of how low interest rates already are — in the wake of this morning’s emergency rate cut, the target range for the federal funds rate is just 1 percent to 1.25 percent — and how large the federal budget deficit already is.

Without further ado, here are my predictions about what the recession will mean for Biglaw. Take these predictions for whatever they’re worth, since I don’t claim any special power of prognostication. (I certainly didn’t see the last recession coming, and yeah, I thought Hillary was going to win too.)

1. There will be layoffs — but not as many as during the Great Recession.

In the last recession, the so-called “Great Recession,” an estimated 10,000 lawyers in Biglaw, as well as thousands of staff, lost their jobs. The layoffs were, as Kathryn Rubino succinctly described them, “brutal.” On one particularly terrible day that we dubbed “Black Thursday,” almost 1,000 lawyers and staffers lost their jobs.

This recession will also bring layoffs, but I don’t think they’ll be as bad as in the last recession. Why? On the lawyer side, firms haven’t been as profligate with their hiring as they were in the years leading up to the Great Recession (instead preferring to overwork their existing associates before hiring new ones, for better or worse). On the staff side, firms have actually been making cuts over the past few years, using a combination of layoffs and buyouts to trim the ranks.

Conducting layoffs during an economic boom, sending staffers packing as partner profits hit record highs, struck some as harsh and unnecessary. But it will probably mean fewer layoffs during the recession than we would have had otherwise — you can’t cut more once you’ve reached bone.

2. There will be firm collapses — but not as many as during the Great Recession.

A number of Biglaw firms fell apart around the time of the Great Recession or in its wake, as a result of recession-inflicted injuries. Pour some out for Heller, Thelen, Thacher Proffitt & Wood, Howrey, and, of course, dearly departed Dewey.

But many firms have learned lessons from the recession. Since the Great Recession, firms have been seeking greater capital contributions from their partners, reducing their reliance on bank loans and outside credit, cutting back on lavish guarantees to lateral partners, and otherwise shoring up their financials ahead of the coming storm.

Yes, there will be some law firm bankruptcies and dissolutions, but not as many as last time. And some of the firms that will fall would probably have fallen apart anyway, with the recession just acting as an accelerating factor rather than a “but for” cause.

3. Some countercyclical practice areas will pick up — but not as much as one might expect.

The practices that people talk about as somewhat countercyclical, like litigation and bankruptcy, could heat during the recession. But I don’t think they’ll heat up as much as some might think.

Litigation, I fear, is in something of a secular decline. A recession might slow or temporarily reverse this trend, but I don’t know that it will change the overall trajectory.

Litigation is basically eating itself, getting so expensive that it is fueling the rise of alternative forms of dispute resolution and also leading to earlier settlements, instead of the long-running and lucrative courtroom battles that made the practice a moneymaker for so many years. Also, the discovery/e-discovery process that used to be such a cash cow has been disrupted by technology — and made less lucrative, at least for law firms (with legal technology companies and alternative legal service providers capturing some of the lost profits). There’s a reason why I recently wrote, “Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be litigators.”

As for bankruptcy, it is also pricing itself out of existence. Obscenely expensive Chapter 11 litigations have led to more (and faster) out-of-court restructurings and prepackaged bankruptcies. Also, remember that interest rates remain quite low — and will go even lower as the Federal Reserve tries to fight the recession. A low-interest rate environment isn’t good for the bankruptcy bar, since it makes it easier for companies to avoid insolvency by finding new sources of credit or by reaching accommodations with their creditors.

So what’s the bottom line? The bad news is that the recession is here or about to arrive; the good news is that it won’t be that bad (at least compared to the Great Recession; there’s a reason we call it “Great”).

This isn’t very exciting, which might be disappointing to some. But after all the excitement of the past few weeks — the twists and turns of the Democratic primary, the worldwide spread of coronavirus, last month’s stock market meltdown — a bit of boredom might be just what the doctor ordered.

Coronavirus, Election Jitters Have Law Firm Leaders Pondering a Downturn [Law.com]

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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.