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After the New York Board of Law Examiners indicated that, because of seating constraints, it would be offering priority seating at the upcoming Fall administration of the New York bar exam to graduates of New York law schools, we started hearing deans from out-of-state schools cry foul. A total of 21 deans have now signed onto a letter addressed to New York Court of Appeals Chief Judge Janet DiFiore lodging their objections to the plan. Earlier today, Above the Law also published Dean Vik Amar’s monthly column outlining his problems with the New York response to the crisis. And there is a conversation that needs to be had about whether or not New York has adopted the best approach to serve both the public and bar applicants.

But with all the rhetoric flying around, let’s make a few things clear off the top so we don’t lose anybody:

1.) There is nothing in this proposal suggesting that out-of-state applicants cannot or will not be admitted to the bar;
2.) No, this isn’t “protectionist”;
3.) It’s definitely not something we should be calling “discriminatory” with a straight face; and
4.) Yes, New York should ultimately junk this plan.

To be abundantly clear, two things can very much be true. First, New York’s decision to prioritize seating for graduates of New York law schools for the upcoming Fall administration of the exam can be an entirely prudent and responsible course of action, and second, it can be entirely silly to insist on having an in-person bar exam at all at this point. We’ve been pretty upfront around here with our support for a diploma privilege plus program — at least temporarily, if not permanently — and, failing that, encouraging any sub-optimal solution that recognizes the folly of forging ahead with an in-person bar exam. Given the scheduling changes states have had to endure and the likelihood that applicants will need to be even further distanced when an exam really does happen, putting even further strains on the process, this is the conclusion everyone should have reached by now.

Accepting that these are independent points, the problem with legal academics tossing around terms like “protectionist” and “discriminatory” is that it not only fails to provide a useful solution, it’s downright counterproductive and smacks of a haughty presumption that’s unbecoming of these schools.

But, I guess if you’re constitutional hammers, everything starts to look like a precedential nail.

Over the weekend, former Northwestern dean Dan Rodriguez called this plan “protectionist” and Dean Amar’s column calls it “favoritism,” which strikes at the same thing. The problem is, this is not protectionist. New York is not banning out-of-state applicants. New York is not putting a quota on out-of-state applicants. New York is not instituting a different cut score for out-of-state applicants. The state said that, in a world where we still take an in-person bar exam, the in-state examinees will take the test first with out-of-state applicants to follow. No one will be denied access to a license and no benefit is inuring to New York-licensed attorneys at the expense of future examinees.

After all, we have no problem with Wisconsin, which recognizes one rule — diploma privilege — for its law schools that isn’t accessible to those outside the state. That’s far more “protectionist” than anything proposed by BOLE since it actually sets up completely distinct paths to securing a license for in-state and out-of-state examinees.

Dean Amar’s column points out that it’s unconstitutional for a state to reserve bar membership to citizens of the state, which is probably why that’s explicitly not what New York is suggesting. It’s a fundamental right to be allowed access to a law license and stripping someone of that would invite strict scrutiny. Is that right fundamentally impaired by having some students take the exam in September and others in February? That’s a significant leap getting glossed over.

The deans’ letter notes:

Still, as you can imagine, the news of your approach has fallen hard on the many students who had planned to sit for the bar in New York this summer or fall, a number of whom have already physically returned or relocated to New York during this pandemic.

But the New York bar exam already requires many students who have relocated to their upcoming jobs in Manhattan to travel to Albany to take the exam and, let’s be honest, traveling to Albany is traumatic in the best of times.

The point is, if the alternative is taking the UBE in New Jersey or heading to Albany, the out-of-state examinee is now better off on this score. Assuming, of course, that other states are going to allow applicants to crowd their testing halls to take an exam with no intention of securing a license in that state, which they probably won’t. That’s another knock on BOLE’s plan, but a knock wholly apart from suggesting that it’s unfair to make out-of-state applicants travel for the exam. [UPDATE: Oh, and it just strikes me that staggering the administration in this way increases the odds that an out-of-state student may be able to take it in Manhattan when the time comes which is another benefit.]

But as bad as “protectionist” rhetoric is, co-opting the language of racial and gender injustice to complain about bar exam seating is really uncalled for. Obviously treating in-state and out-of-state applicants differently for administration dates is technically “discrimination” but when that rhetoric is tossed around in letters like these it’s intended to evoke struggles that really don’t belong in this conversation.

From the deans’ letter:

And we worry that the resulting delay in the exam’s administration and admission to practice will fall hardest on the most economically vulnerable of our graduates and on those whose continued presence in the United States will be compromised by the delay…

This is a vitally important consideration but one that seems misplaced. If a Biglaw firm has hired a graduate on a visa to perform legal work, that job isn’t going away because the attorney-to-be didn’t get to take the bar exam on the first post-pandemic administration.

Perhaps unintentionally, the concern over the economically vulnerable gets to the heart of BOLE’s rationale for prioritizing the graduates of New York schools. Dean Amar writes:

What about the possibility that New York-based law school graduates are less likely (than graduates of out-of state schools) to take their UBE score and leave the state to practice elsewhere?

This is getting to the issue, but not quite there. The Stanford grad taking the New York bar is far more likely to be joining a global Biglaw firm that will allow the graduate to be employed and receive benefits while working as a supervised law clerk. The population of graduates who depend on passing the New York bar as a lifeline to earn their livelihood as future solo practitioners or at tiny shops that can’t carry an employee without a license are more likely products of local New York schools. Someone may be graduating from Duke with a plan to work slip and falls in Utica, but probably not. The graduates most likely to be economically at risk based on a modest delay are the graduates of New York-based schools. Add in that these attorneys are more likely to be serving economically underprivileged sectors than, say, Exxon and Goldman Sachs, and the value of speeding in-state examinees in a staggered schedule is a lot more compelling.

So that’s the purpose of the New York plan. It isn’t cutting off bar admission to anyone; it’s a reasonable effort to stagger the schedule in a way that minimizes pain. That it’s not perfect is probably a good reason to abandon an in-person exam, but if we’re stuck here then we’re stuck here.

In their letter, the deans make four suggestions for BOLE of varying degrees of plausibility.

• Offering a second date for New York’s administration of the UBE in the September 30-October 1 sitting that will be offered by the National Conference of Bar Examiners;

Would that they could. Unfortunately, the NCBE has shown no interest in allowing a second administration of the test as part of the entity’s overarching worry that someone might get a slim unfair advantage. We expect to hear more about NCBE’s plans for September with a promised update tomorrow, but barring some loosening out of the NCBE, New York’s hands are tied.

• Increasing seating for New York’s September 9-10 administration of the UBE by adding new locations within New York State;

• Creating seats for New York’s administration of the UBE outside of New York State, including, potentially, using some of our schools as possible venues;

Adding more seats! Wow, why didn’t New York think of that? Some 10,000 people take the July administration of the New York bar every year and almost half of them take it in the Javits Center, Manhattan’s sprawling convention center. All of these venues, but especially the Javits Center, are locations booked far in advance and boast a near constant stream of hosting obligations. It’s highly unlikely that the state can secure all of these seats on a dime for a September administration (nor would they necessarily be wise to do so as it’s equally unlikely those venues would permit a second wave of COVID triggering an impossibility clause which could leave the state on the hook for a massive bill if it relied on these commercial venues) and assuming some manner of social distancing will still be either required (or at least preferred by neurotic law grads), BOLE is potentially staring at a more extreme real estate need.

And while some out-of-state schools have offered up their campuses to help out, this only creates a new problem. As the deans themselves just explained above, students have already relocated to New York so forcing them to return to the West Coast to take a test does little to address that problem. It also privileges students at the out-of-state schools capable of servicing their graduates while applicants in New York proper are likely still going to be turned away in September for lack of space even with these provisions. The whole thing reeks of the privilege that graduates of top schools that have secured Biglaw jobs should obviously not be inconvenienced by a global catastrophe. If it makes the deans feel any better to know that the U.S. News rankings won’t ding them on bar passage within nine months over this, we could try to make that happen.

• Working to develop an on-line bar exam, either in conjunction with the NCBE or as a freestanding New York exam.

Yes. This.

This is the only viable proposal in this letter and it’s one that New York should not only consider but one that the state should use its considerable clout to pressure the NCBE to accommodate. The NCBE already balked at an online exam and prompted Massachusetts to start writing its own exam. Add New York to that list and the folks in Madison probably couldn’t stand up to the mounting pressure.

Bar applicants shouldn’t have to sit for an in-person exam this year. Period.

Despite this September plan, there’s still no certainty on timing. There’s no obvious path for prep courses to move forward. There’s a seating demand that is frankly untenable. And it just sucks to ask graduates to take time out of their new jobs to go back and cram for and take a test. The fairest solution is one that requires everyone to take it online at once or no one have to take an exam portion at all. At the point you find yourself dancing around with how New York should better allocate limited seats for an in-person exam, you’ve completely lost the plot.

But here’s the thing that my weekend interactions with legal academics showed me — they just don’t get how silly these arguments sound under the circumstances and, consequently, how badly their strategy undermines the effort to get some useful reform.

(Check out the deans’ letter on the next page.)

Earlier: Law School Student Governments Petitioning For Diploma-Privileged Admission
NY Bar Exam To Be Limited To NY Law Schools, Other Law Schools… Displeased
NY Bar Exam Encounters New Hurdle — Not Enough Space To Test Everyone
The New York Bar’s Misguided Discrimination Against Out-Of-State Law Schools

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.

The true cost of the Covid-19 pandemic is nearly impossible to quantify. The human toll, surpassing the Vietnam War last week at 60,000 deaths, is difficult to comprehend. The number of people who have lost their livelihoods, at 30 million, is as yet incomplete, as many face long waits to file for unemployment. And we still don’t know the long-term effects on the economy or how the crisis will end, as experts warn that the novel coronavirus may well return in the fall.

But health insurance companies are less worried about the cost of the pandemic. As they prepare premium rates for 2021, a bigger problem than the cost of care will be the uptick in uninsured.

“The reality is that once we get the pandemic better under control, there’s a very real concern that there is going to be a longer-term economic downturn,” said Jocelyn Guyer, a managing director with Manatt Health. “The question of where people are getting coverage is going to be with us for a long time.”

How much does covering Covid-19 cost?
Calculations on the cost of care for the average Covid-19 case vary by a wide margin. One estimate by Covered California pegged the average cost per admission at $72,000, with patients admitted to the hospital staying for an average of 12 days. Less sick patients can rack up $600 in the average cost for an outpatient visit.

Centene CEO Michael Neidorff said the company had not yet seen enough claims data to estimate the average cost of Covid-19 treatment for Medicaid patients.

“It’s not been significant. It’s been more the testing — and we haven’t seen a lot,” he said during a Tuesday earnings call.

Even with most insurers covering out-of-pocket costs for Covid-19 testing and treatment, they may see savings in the end as patients suspend other care during the pandemic. Healthcare providers from orthopedic surgeons to dentists were forced to cancel all non-emergency procedures for the last month. Analysts with Moody’s Investors Service estimated insurers will see a decrease in utilization between 20% and 40% per month from non-essential procedures.

The postponed hip replacements and stent procedures are expected to come back, but when that will happen is anyone’s guess. Some states have already begun to lift restrictions on healthcare services, but patients, worried about getting sick, may still be hesitant to seek care.

“If you think about yourself personally, you wouldn’t feel comfortable walking into a hospital, a dentist’s office or an outpatient facility. When you think about the higher risk folks that need cardiac [surgeries] done, they’ll come in first,” Moody’s Assistant Vice President Stefan Kahandaliyanage said in a phone interview. “You’ll have this gradual pacing. We don’t expect a huge comeback of patients.”

Whether or not the cost of Covid-19 treatment will inflate premiums next year is still up in the air. Covered California estimated that premium increases could range from 4% to 40% next year, though the latter would be a high estimate.

Rita Numerof, co-founder of healthcare consulting firm Numerof & Associates, said she expected to see rate hikes next year, as insurers anticipate cancelled procedures will be rescheduled. But if premiums are too high, “I think there will be enormous pushback from businesses,” she said.

Dean Ungar, a vice president and senior credit officer with Moody’s, said it depends on how the rest of the pandemic plays out.

“It seems like we’re more on the mild side of things, but we don’t really know yet,” he said. “We don’t know what happens when we start to relax social distancing and lockdowns. It’s a little bit early to say.”

Where will people go for insurance?
The bigger question, for the moment, is where people who have lost their coverage will go for insurance. As many as 35 million people — including workers and their families — could lose employer-based health insurance during the pandemic, according to a report by Health Management Associates. As a result, Medicaid enrollment would increase by 11 million to 23 million, and another 1 million to 2 million people would get individual insurance, largely through the ACA marketplaces.

Health Management Associates estimated insurance coverage based on three different unemployment scenarios. In the worst-case scenario, 35 million people would lose employer-sponsored coverage.

States that manage their own ACA marketplaces are reporting a boost in enrollment. Since many of them have also opened special enrollment periods that allow the uninsured to get coverage, it’s difficult to know how much of the increase is from people who recently lost jobs.

• In New York, roughly 200,000 people enrolled through the New York State of Health exchange since the beginning of March, for a total of 5.1 million.
• In California, 84,000 people signed up for its marketplace plans after March 20. That’s more than 2.5 times as many people as enrolled during the same period last year.
• In Colorado, more than 12,200 people enrolled in marketplace plans. During the same period last year, just 1,861 people enrolled.
• In Minnesota, more than 9,482 people enrolled through its state-run marketplace and more than 13,700 people applied for public health insurance programs between March 23 and April 21.

“That’s going to be an important lifeline for folks,” Manatt’s Guyer said.

On the other hand, the federal government has not opened a special enrollment period for HealthCare.gov, meaning that in many states, people who were already uninsured couldn’t gain coverage through a marketplace plan. For instance, if an Uber driver lost their job, they would see no benefit.

“If you lose job-based coverage, you can sign up. But not if you just lose a job. Someone from the gig economy, if they have no health insurance right now, it does not allow them to enroll in the marketplace in federally managed states,” she added.

Looking to the Great Recession
More people would likely get coverage through Medicaid, though again, this depends on the state. During the Great Recession, when unemployment rates rose sharply to 10%, the U.S. saw major enrollment increases in Medicaid. In turn, states received increased Medicaid matching rates to help cover the cost. Congress has already increased Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) to states by 6% since the pandemic started, and there may be another push to increase it to 12%, Guyer said.

“It does look like the economic impact of this could be worse and more sustained. The Great Recession is a good reference point in understanding things,” she said. “(States) are not going to be able to tax their way into covering these costs and they can’t borrow.”

Executives with Anthem are also looking back to the Great Recession as they try to determine what the future will hold. In 2008, commercial and individual customers made up nearly 75% of its membership compared to less than 30% today. Since then, the company has expanded its government footprint, operating Medicaid plans in 23 states and Washington D.C. It also offers plans on the individual exchanges in 14 states.

“We do expect that we will see, because of the potential high unemployment, some impact on our commercial enrollment. The early stages have been muted because of what’s happening with furloughs,” Anthem CEO Gail Boudreaux said in an earnings call. “We have a much more diversified business than we historically had.”

Boudreaux said she expects to see about 40 to 50% of members that had lost their employer-based insurance to get coverage through Medicaid, and another 30% or so to go into the individual exchanges.

In general, large, national insurance carriers will be better positioned to withstand the crisis, said Joel Ario, a managing director with Manatt Health. For example, companies like UnitedHealth Group, which have a mixture of employer-based and government plans, will be able to recapture members.

“They are across all of these markets so when people move from one market to the other, they tend to have the same members,” Ario said.

Smaller regional or local carriers, especially if they’re in an area that has been harder hit, will have a tougher time. Companies like Centene and Molina Healthcare, which have a big presence in the individual marketplaces and Medicaid plans, are expecting an uptick in members. In an earnings call, Centene CFO Jeffrey Schwaneke said the company had already seen some early membership growth in April, particularly in states that had open special enrollment periods for marketplace plans.

More insurers may look to bolster their presence in the ACA marketplaces in the coming years. UnitedHealthcare CEO Dirk McMahon said the company had already begun to look at participating in more exchanges prior to the pandemic, which it had largely exited in recent years.

“We’re still in the process of going through market by market, evaluating the relative efficiency of our network, our ability to compete, and states where we would like to extend Medicaid,” he said.

Keep your old plan

Payers are also pushing to make it easier for the newly unemployed to stay on their old plan. It’s an option that many patients would like — and is also more profitable.

Humana CFO Brian Kane said the company expected to see Medicaid membership grow, offset by reductions in large group plans and terminations of some small group plans. He expects small businesses “will disproportionately be impacted by the pandemic.”

To help them, Humana is proactively identifying companies that might be at-risk and helping them find more affordable coverage options.

A survey by LIMRA said carriers are also tweaking their benefit eligibility policies to extend coverage for employees that might have been affected by the pandemic. Of the surveyed carriers, 42% said they would continue coverage for all employees for a specific period of time, and another 22% said they would extend eligibility on a case-by-case basis.

Insurance groups are also lobbying for COBRA subsidies, which would help offset the cost for laid off employees to stay on their old health plan. Without their old company helping cover the cost, premium payments through COBRA can be staggering. The House of Representatives is currently weighing this strategy as part of its next Covid-19 relief package.

In the meantime, most insurers have kept their profit forecasts for the end of the year.

Photo credit: Joe Raedle, Getty Images.

Here’s a question that’s been making the rounds:

Who led your company’s digital transformation?

1. Chief Executive Officer
2. Chief Financial Officer
3. Chief Information Officer
4. COVID-19

Here’s another question that’s been making the rounds, as companies start thinking about how they’ll reopen:

“What the heck are we doing leasing all that space?”

Perhaps this is a question that should start making the rounds: Will the market for Class A commercial space in center cities soon decline?

That may be the least of our worries during the COVID-19 disaster, but it may be something worth considering.

There are other things that the pandemic will change, many of them permanently.

In the law: Perhaps mechanisms other than in-person case management conferences are a better way to manage cases. In-person conferences are expensive, and they often achieve more quibbling than anything else. We may be learning that frequent video conferences are a better way to manage cases.

We may also be learning that many types of hearings are best conducted online. If a court is going to allow only two minutes of argument on a motion (as frequently happens on “motions days” and as almost always happens before the MDL Panel), perhaps those 120 seconds of argument could be uttered online, rather than in person. Indeed, perhaps all types of routine hearings could be conducted online. We now know that in-person hearings aren’t essential, and courts are becoming accustomed to listening to arguments and testimony over the phone. Why should we ever go back to the old way?

So, too, for many other aspects of society. In the United Kingdom, routine visits to physicians have been conducted by telephone for a long time. The United States has now discovered the telephone (and video conference), and there’s no reason to go back to in-person visits after the pandemic ends.  (Insurance companies may have to rethink their reimbursement policies, but I hope that’s not too much to ask to achieve huge gains in efficiency.)

Online education, too, may now have come of age. (For years, fancy universities said that “students learn as much from their classmates as they do from their professors; that’s why everyone should pay more to attend Hoity-Toity U.” Now that all students are learning from home at Hoity-Toity U, and some students are asking for a corresponding reduction in tuition, it will be interesting to hear Hoity-Toity U argue that the students’ presence on campus actually adds no value at all.) Even apart from my parenthetical aside, if online education remotely resembles in-person education, the online version is a bargain at the price. Students may learn online; employers may come to respect online degrees; and society may move on.

Maybe COVID-19 has accelerated our path to an online future.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

The global pandemic has caused a seismic shift in the possibilities and expectations around the delivery of legal services. How lawyers work, where they work, and what they perceive to be their top priorities are all undergoing true disruption. Those firms that leverage technology to adapt quickly are most likely to not only endure the crisis, but to succeed in whatever landscape lies beyond.

In order to gain an understanding of how law firms are navigating our current challenges, today we are partnering with our friends at AbacusNext, on a new survey. This very brief survey examines technologies, processes, and systems being employed to run today’s firms, from document encryption and regulatory compliance to payment processing and supporting remote work.

There are pressing pro bono needs all around us — even before a pandemic triggered an economic crisis — and allocating the scarce resource of volunteer attorney time is always a challenge. But climate change is the sort of slow motion crisis that produces legal challenges that may be overlooked by firms so focused on the moment that long-term impacts get swamped in the battle for resources.

White & Case offers pro bono services to The International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Climate Change Specialist Group, and recently sent around an email looking for volunteers to help the organization put together a resource guide for attorneys litigating complex climate change issues that arise around the world. As pro bono calls go, it was a pretty straightforward one:

But Miami-based rainmaker Thomas Lauria wasn’t happy to see the firm’s attorneys volunteer to assist an organization helping foreign attorneys deal with the tangible impact of climate change. In an effort to put a stop to the effort, he deployed the dreaded “Reply All” button to lodge his concerns.

He likely meant for this to reach a more limited audience. But sometimes one seemingly small action, like hitting “reply all,” can have unintended ripple effects that create even more damage. Perhaps even damage that’s not immediately apparent and only manifests some time after the email is sent. It’s, like, metaphorical and stuff.

Putting aside that climate change is only a “political activity” to the extent that the Republican Party has decided to ignore multiple decades of scientific consensus, this doesn’t even make sense within the universe of White & Case’s past pro bono endeavors. White & Case worked pro bono to challenge the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy that was just as “political” for reasons just as bad. And in this case the assignment is just helping attorneys in other parts of the world bring legally cognizable claims which shouldn’t be any more political than drafting a casebook.

But of course the complaint isn’t that the assignment is “political,” nor is it some kind of significant resource drain for a 2,000+ attorney behemoth, but that it’s a cause that runs afoul of Lauria’s personal worldview. And Lauria can try to own the libs if he wants (and while tipsters say he’s an admitted Trumpian, his political donation history is bipartisan), but that doesn’t mean he gets to dictate the efforts of a global firm of which he is ultimately a small part. There are firms in this world where one partner holds all the cards, but White & Case and its nearly $2B in revenue is not that firm. If the firm embraces efforts to help a nature conservation group, that’s something he needs to suck up. Part of being a partner is recognizing that the platform serves the rest of the firm too.

And in this case, if White & Case is trying to save the Miami office from ending up two feet underwater, that’s good for Lauria whether he’s willing to admit it or not.

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.

Could Booking acquire an 800 number that’s a vanity number, 1-800-booking for example, that is similar to 1-800-plumbing, which is a registered mark?

— Justice Clarence Thomas, asking a question during the Supreme Court’s first remote oral argument session. The high court audiostreamed live oral arguments from afar for the first time in history due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This is first time Thomas has spoken from the bench since March 2019. Before that, he asked a question during oral argument in 2016. Prior to that, he went for 10 years without speaking while oral arguments were in session.

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 novel coronavirus just keeps on taking swipes at the legal profession. Very few firms are likely to escape the pandemic in exactly the same shape as before.

The latest firm to cut positions in the wake of COVID-19, is New York City-based Davidoff Hutcher & Citron. The firm filed notice under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act saying that the coronavirus is forcing it to lay off 34 people.

According to Law.com, Jeffrey Citron, co-managing partner at the firm, played up the overall health of the firm saying the decision was “purely preventative” and “playing defense,” noting:

“It was very difficult to have the secretaries working, not being in the office,” he said. While the firm’s attorneys “all have laptops, and most of the attorneys are computer-literate,” he said, it was harder to adapt the work of support staff to the pandemic’s restrictions.

Best wishes to all those who find themselves suddenly out of work.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

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).

Move over “Florida man” stories, because 2020 is shaping up to be the year of the “Florida lawyer.” That is if Florida attorney Daniel Uhlfelder has anything to do with it. Uhlfelder is the man you’ve probably heard of by now who achieved nationwide notoriety by dressing as the archetypal representation of Death itself in order to caution Florida beachgoers against the dangers of reopening pandemic-stricken beaches too soon.

When I heard of this story, I immediately sent Uhlfelder an email asking for an interview. He responded within just a few minutes (note the stellar attorney responsiveness if you’re a prospective client) and agreed to sit down with me for an interview (over the phone, from a very safe distance). What follows is our delightful conversation, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Jonathan Wolf (JW): Thanks for taking the time to talk today. How long have you been practicing law?

Daniel Uhlfelder (DU): Twenty plus years. I graduated in 1996.

JW: Any particular areas of expertise or types of law you’re most interested in practicing?

DU: It’s a general practice firm. I mostly do litigation, civil litigation, commercial litigation, real estate, some family law. Court stuff fits my personality.

JW: So, as you know, we’re here to talk about this practice of dressing up as the Grim Reaper to visit local beaches in Florida. You’re spreading the word about the fact that you think the beaches are reopening too soon. I totally get the impulse to do something to help people make the right choices in this pandemic, but what inspired you to spread your message by dressing up as the personification of death?

DU: It goes back a little bit. For the past two years I’ve been involved in a hotly contested debate about keeping our beaches open to the public. Mike Huckabee is involved here in the panhandle on the other side of that debate, he and other powerful people have been trying to privatize their beaches.

JW: Like the Mike Huckabee?

DU: Yeah, that one. I went from 400 Twitter followers to tens of thousands after an exchange with him, and used the notoriety from that to start a PAC in February to help promote keeping the beaches public. Of course, that’s right when the pandemic struck.

So, I went to a paint store to get some masks, and they had a whole hazmat suit there that I bought when I saw it, not knowing how serious this all would get. It was actually a full body suit for painting, but looked like a hazmat suit.

Driving, I saw tons of people out on the beaches during Spring Break. There were two universes of people: people staying home to fight the pandemic, and people hitting the beaches. So, I wore the hazmat suit on the beach as a kind of commentary on this situation, which got a lot of attention.

I also filed suit pro bono against the governor to try to close the beaches during the pandemic, but it’s this image of this lawyer on the beach in a paint suit that looked like a hazmat suit that really got things moving. Through a lot of work, we got the beaches mostly closed to reduce risk during the pandemic.

Then almost as soon as we got some of this success, they started talking about reopening the beaches again, too soon. The hazmat suit wasn’t doing enough, so the death suit was the next step.

JW: You told me about where you got the paint suit. Where’d you get the Grim Reaper getup? Is it homemade?

DU: I ordered one online from Walmart and it was way too hot, and looked cheesy, so I asked a friend of mine who makes clothes here to make me one. She suggested making one out of linen. Linen is much better for a Grim Reaper suit on the beach, if anyone wants to make their own.

JW: The reports of you storming the beaches of Florida dressed as Death itself have been widely reported on — CNN, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, those are just a few of the news outlets reporting on this, you were even talking with the ABA Journal when I first called — how are you dealing with this newfound notoriety?

DU: I’m pleased with it. It’s raised awareness of what’s going on in Florida. A big part of change is informing people of what’s going on, and I’ve informed a lot of people. I just want to be strategic about what I do with this increased level of interest now, so I can use it to promote the common good.

My parents always told me talk is cheap, what are you going to actually do? I’m really happy about the widespread interest in what I’m doing and in turning all this interest into action.

And since you’re a lawyer writing for a legal website, I’ll just say that my father was a lawyer, and lawyers in previous generations took on public interest issues, I saw that happening. But I’m not seeing that as much today. Being a lawyer isn’t just about making money, it’s about doing things to help people. I’m not on the same level as Louis Brandeis or Thurgood Marshall, but lawyers now are so afraid to do things that might offend people that they won’t take a risk to do the right thing.

JW: I agree with that.

DU: I would like to see some kids in law school taught how to be good citizens. Don’t know what they’re teaching in law school now, not how to draft an interrogatory. Should at least teach some public service.

JW: Personally, I love seeing lawyers with personality and some eccentric flare. But have you gotten any flack from people offended over this?

DU: I probably got three emails since we’ve been talking. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff people critical of me are saying. I’m Jewish, my grandfather escaped Nazi Germany, I had family who died in the Holocaust, and I’m getting some anti-Semitic crap. Also been getting some lawyer stuff, calling me an ambulance chaser, that kind of thing. My response is, what are they doing to help society?

JW: That’s awful to hear. I get a lot of hate mail myself. Just delete it. I always get more positive emails from readers than negative ones though, so I hope you’re also getting the message that there are plenty of people who support what you’ve doing.

DU: You can be a great lawyer and a great public citizen; they aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m doing this as a good citizen, even if some people aren’t thrilled with it. That’s what’s lacking in the legal profession.

Do you have any other questions for me?

JW: Just a couple, and these will hopefully be a little more lighthearted. You probably don’t know this about me, but I have a 12-inch tattoo of the Grim Reaper covering the side of my torso. Do I have to worry about any type of intellectual property issues if I show up shirtless at one of the beaches you’re touring?

DU: You need to send me a picture of that.

JW: Will do. Last but not least, I know you’re not doing any of this for business purposes, but I’ve noticed you have a nice law firm website. Would you like to plug that or anything else to my readers?

DU: Sure. The website explains what we do. If you have a legal situation in Florida, look us up. We’re in a small community, but I try to provide big-city type service. I deal with a lot of high-end properties and disputes. I take my practice really seriously. I’m always thinking like a lawyer, and you don’t have to tell me a lot of stuff for me to get the issue in an instinctive sort of way.

I love what I’m doing. I love practicing law, and by loving what you’re doing, I think you do a better job.

***

So, there you have it. My thanks to Mr. Uhlfelder for taking some time to chat with me on a lovely Saturday morning. To anyone who might be able to use his services, you can find his law firm website using the link in this sentence. Cool though it may be, I suspect he’ll change out of the linen Grim Reaper costume before your initial consultation.

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.