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Thanks to the global health crisis that is the novel coronavirus, the traditional law school entrance exam, the LSAT is going home. That’s right, after previously announcing the cancellation of the April administration of the exam, the Law School Admission Council, the organization that administers the LSAT, has announced that there’ll be a May LSAT that law school hopefuls can take at home.

From their announcement:

In light of the COVID-19 public health emergency, we are introducing an online, remotely-proctored version of the LSAT — called the LSAT-Flex — in the second half of May for test takers who were registered for the April 2020 test. We will continue to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic closely and will make other LSAT-Flex test dates available this spring and summer if the situation warrants. We plan to resume the in-person LSAT once conditions allow, in strict accordance with public health authorities and using all necessary health and safety measures. In the meantime, the remotely proctored LSAT-Flex will provide candidates with the opportunity to earn an LSAT score even if the COVID-19 crisis makes it impossible to deliver the test in-person.

This isn’t a tremendous surprise, after all the alternate law school admissions exam, the GRE, has already announced the home version of that test. This is just the LSAC getting with the program.

Jeff Thomas, executive director of admissions programs of Kaplan Test Prep, had this to say about the at-home test:

“Creating a version of the LSAT that aspiring lawyers can take from the safety of their own homes is a win for test takers, many of whom had their admissions timelines disrupted because of COVID-19-related test cancellations in April. This makes an uncertain and stressful situation a lot more manageable. Our advice to students is to take the LSAT-Flex if they qualify, especially if they are planning to apply for enrollment in the fall 2020 semester. It seems likely that some parts of the country will still be hard hit by COVID-19 this summer, making it unlikely that normal test administrations can take place for a few months. The good news is that the format of LSAT-Flex is the same as LSAC’s new digital practice tool, so this will not be in a format with which students are unfamiliar.”

Good luck to all those who, despite the current turmoil in the industry, still have their heart set on becoming a lawyer.

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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).

As mentioned in previous articles, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has substantially impacted the legal profession. Economic issues have affected the need for legal services, which has forced law firms to reduce headcount, lower salaries, and take other efforts to weather the storm. However, based on my own experience, some practice areas seem to be expanding in the current environment, and other practice areas are struggling because of COVID-19.

Wills And Estates

It might sound macabre, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has compelled numerous people to consider wills and estate planning. Indeed, my firm does not focus on wills and related issues, and we usually only handle a few wills a month. However, we received five inquiries for wills over a 48-hour period recently, which is very unusual for our firm. Wills are the classic thing that people put off. No one wants to think about their own demise, and it requires some effort to get the witnesses together to execute a will. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced all of us to think deeply about end-of-life issues, and this is compelling people to seek wills and estate planning advice. Of course, it has been tricky to organize will executions due to social distancing guidelines, but many clients have been approaching lawyers about estate issues due to the present environment.

Litigation

As many people might surmise, litigation is one of the practice areas that has been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The traditional wisdom is that litigation is somewhat recession-proof, since economic downturns usually spur the types of disputes that need to be litigated. However, many litigators have substantially less work now due to so many court closures, and numerous court conferences have either been adjourned or are being conducted through remote means. Furthermore, some states have even prohibited most nonessential filings. A few weeks ago, I needed to file some documents by a certain date, but was prevented from doing so because of filing restrictions. I was forced to just email the documents to counsel with the understanding that it would be filed when prohibitions were restricted, and everyone understood the situation. However, the lack of filing capacity has reduced litigation work on all but the most essential matters, and depending on their clients, many litigators are being hit hard because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Transactional Work

A practice area that is expanding (at least in the short term) because of COVID-19 is transactional work. As mentioned in a prior article, many clients are seeking advice on canceling contracts for gatherings that were set to occur in the next several months. Some of these contracts include impossibility or force majeure clauses, and a variety of common law defenses can be used to cancel such agreements even if the explicit terms of a contract don’t relate to the ongoing pandemic. Nevertheless, there are issues about how much deposit money should be paid back that was advanced for these events and whether gatherings can be postponed rather than canceled. Furthermore, a number of tenants and landlords are negotiating agreements to defer or reduce rent for a time because of COVID-19, and this requires careful negotiation by an attorney.

Furthermore, some demand for legal work on completely new deals is occurring despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Some clients understand that they can get huge concessions and very favorable terms due to the crisis, and this is compelling some to pursue completely new deals. Of course, only a focused set of clients who have a strong economic base can pursue such a strategy, but discussing new deals may be desirable to many clients in this environment. Even though transactional work typically suffers during economic downturns because of the lack of business activity, it seems that at least temporarily, many clients have a substantial need for transactional legal work.

Personal Injury

Plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyers have also been negatively impacted by COVID-19. Since many court conferences have been adjourned, and numerous lawsuits are essentially frozen in place, many personal injury cases will not be resolved anytime soon. In addition, many insurance companies have slowed settlement talks, and some may even be delaying payments of settlements that were previously negotiated. This is likely because many companies want to hold onto their money for as long as possible in the current environment. It is also difficult, if not impossible, to put new personal injury cases into suit in many states due to filing prohibitions and other limitations. Since it often takes years for a personal injury cases to settle, plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyers may not only experience a shortfall in the near term due to COVID-19, but may also see income interruptions in the future as well.

Of course, a number of other practice areas are being impacted by COVID-19. For instance, I have heard that matrimonial lawyers are anticipating more business because of the stress involved in the current situation and because spouses are cooped up at home. In addition, the traditional countercyclical practice areas, including bankruptcy law, are expanding because of the current situation. If attorneys have a good sense of the expanding and contracting practice areas in the current environment, they can best weather the storm of COVID-19.

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Earlier this month, we reported that it was only a matter of time before more Biglaw partners would be forced to cut their draws and distributions to stave off the pain caused by the novel coronavirus. In fact, law firm management consultant Patrick McKenna said he’d be surprised if at least 80 percent of the top 200 firms in the country hadn’t made such a move by the middle of April, noting that “a typical reduction is in the range of 30 percent.” We’ve got to give him a lot of credit, because his prediction continues to ring true.

Today, we have news on a firm ranked just outside of the Am Law 100 that’s decided to make a move on partner compensation for the benefit of all its employees.

A confidential source tells us that Lowenstein Sandler is slashing its partner draws to so the firm can safely ride out the COVID-19 financial roller coaster that’s soon to come. Here are the details that we received:

At a video town hall meeting attended by over 500 employees last Friday, Lowenstein Sandler Chair Gary Wingens announced that the firm had a very strong March, yet had substantially reduced distributions to its equity partners in order to preserve liquidity for what it expected to be a bumpy second quarter. While he hoped to not have to make other cuts, Wingens made it clear that they were watching their metrics very carefully over the coming weeks.

When reached for comment by Above the Law, firm management confirmed Wingens’s comments, but did not specify the percentage cuts partners were taking. We hope this move is enough to guide the firm through what’s sure to be a rough time.

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.

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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.

If only there were a way to test new technology without torturing a bunch of people enduring the most stressful waiting period of their lives during a pandemic. Alas, Colorado couldn’t think of one and blasted a notification to February bar examinees informing them that they should check their results.

It all looked official to examinees, even though they had been told that results wouldn’t be out for 3 more weeks:

Then things go awry. One tipster explains what happened after seeing the pass notification:

Obviously, I am very excited and tell everyone I know, including the dean of my law school (who sends out a message to all of the 3L’s at the school). After a few hours and after signing up for the mandatory CLE for admissions, I get a message from a professor, who I had told, that the results may not be legit and to check their site, I see that they were Beta testing and that the results sent out are not accurate.

The most insane thing about this is that it doesn’t even make sense as a “Beta test.” If the purpose of the test is to make sure examinees (a) will receive the notification and (b) be able to securely access a message intended just for them, then rather than go to the trouble of prematurely announcing results and definitely rather than giving those examinees fake results, Colorado could have just sent some kind of notification that things are still on track and maybe a “please access your personal account to verify.”

I have attempted to contact the Office of Attorney Admissions several times with no response. I have several friends who have told all of their friends and family as well. It seems like a very awful thing to do considering we are locked down due to a pandemic.

Well, in fairness, it only seems like a very awful thing to do because it is a very awful thing to do. The only saving grace for Colorado right now is if the results they accidentally released turn out to be the real results instead of randomly generated dummy results. And if that’s the case, the full results should be released today, pre-existing timelines be damned.

And to think, all these students calling for diploma-privilege would miss out on formative experiences like this…

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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.

It would be unfair to say that Michael Burry, like some other people, is a contrarian by principle. His weirdness, such as it is, comes from the principle that he’d like to be right about things, as he was about the subprime mortgage bubble, and this can certainly come off as contrarianism, like, for instance, when he says the only thing worth investing in is water, or that index funds are the new CDOs. Or when he starts sounding like Stephen Moore vis-à-vis coronavirus.

“Universal stay-at-home is the most devastating economic force in modern history,” Burry wrote in an email to Bloomberg News. “And it is man-made. It very suddenly reverses the gains of underprivileged groups, kills and creates drug addicts, beats and terrorizes women and children in violent now-jobless households, and more. It bleeds deep anguish and suicide.”

* A Florida judge has tossed a lawsuit claiming that the governor of Florida couldn’t close the state’s beaches because of COVID-19. Looks like people will have to hit tanning beds instead of beaches…it’s an essential service, right? [Orlando Sentinel]

* A federal judge has ordered the inspection of DC jails amid concerns that prison officials are not doing enough to prevent the spread of COVID-19. [Washington Post]

* The family of a Walmart employee has filed a wrongful death lawsuit after the employee died from COVID-19. [NBC News]

* StubHub is another one of the long list of businesses facing class action lawsuits for allegedly not treating customers fairly when it comes to dealing with issues involving COVID-19. [Billboard]

* Officials in Los Angeles have settled a lawsuit with a company claiming that they had accurate in-home test kits that could detect antibodies for COVID-19. [Los Angeles Daily News]

* A lawyer with no park experience will now be in charge of the Grand Canyon. What does this attorney really need to know other than not to fall in? [Washington Post]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Zimbabwe’s severe shortage of U.S. dollars is set to worsen as the coronavirus threatens the start of sales of tobacco, its second-biggest source of foreign exchange.

“It’s the cash flow that’s the biggest concern for everyone,” Ben Gilpin, executive director of the Commercial Farmers Union, said by phone from the capital, Harare, on Tuesday. “The people that provide finance to tobacco farmers did so until the end of March, with the expectation that from April debts are being serviced, but there is no money now.”

Like its neighbors, Zimbabwe has imposed a 21-day lockdown to halt the spread of the virus. That’s shuttered mines, while remittances from abroad have also declined.

The International Monetary Fund said in its latest Article IV report that the country had $109 million in foreign-exchange reserves, enough for just one week of imports. The southern African nation restricts cash withdrawals and needs foreign currency to pay for goods from food to fuel. The IMF estimated the economy contracted 8.3% in 2019.

Zimbabwe is Africa’s biggest tobacco producer and the crop, which brought in $523 million in income last year, is the nation’s largest source of revenue after mining.

Tobacco sales scheduled to start on April 22 had already been delayed by a regional drought and disagreement between growers and the central bank over payment. That date is now expected to be postponed as the world continues to grapple with the spread of the pandemic. Zimbabwe has 10 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

Even if the lockdown is lifted, social distancing rules will make the usual sales where tobacco farmers throng auction floors for months, unlikely.

“Health comes first before wealth and as an industry we need to decide on plan B,” said Rodney Ambrose, chief executive officer at the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association. “For the farmers, tobacco is their livelihood and foreign currency is generated from these sales.”

An option could be “to decentralize sales at district level” to avoid an influx of tobacco farmers into Harare, he said.

The association estimates a crop size of 240 million kilograms and Ambrose said tobacco prices this year were expected to be higher due to better quality.

A police water cannon sprays disinfectant over residential flats during a 21-day nationwide lockdown called to help curb the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Harare, Zimbabwe, April 3, 2020. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

National Police Spokesperson Paul Nyathi said Tuesday that defiance against lockdown regulations has seen 2,191 people being arrested since Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared a national lockdown.

“The number includes some people who were violating the Liquor Act, operating businesses that are not exempted, illegally transporting members of the public without being cleared, loitering without valid reasons and various crimes under the Miscellaneous Act,” he said.

Nyathi said police have scaled up awareness campaigns to encourage the public to heed the government’s measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

“What is apparent is that the public is taking for granted the messages that are being sent to prevent the spread of COVID-19. There are those who think that because the virus has not seriously impacted on the country they will not be affected. They are not observing social distancing and self-isolation as prescribed to prevent the spread of the virus. We encourage them to heed the government’s measures to prevent the spread of the virus,” Nyathi said.

Zimbabwe is under a 21-day lockdown which started last Monday to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Citizens are expected to stay at home, except for essential movements to seek health services, buy food, medicines, and other essential services.

The country has so far recorded ten positive cases of COVID-19, with one person succumbing to the disease.

Post published in: Featured

* TRADING STATEMENT

* FASTJET ZIMBABWE IS CURRENTLY PLANNING TO RESTART FLIGHT OPERATIONS ON TUESDAY 21 APRIL 2020

* ALL FASTJET GROUP EMPLOYEES HAVE ACCEPTED A VOLUNTARY SALARY REDUCTION EFFECTIVE FROM 1 APRIL 2020 OF UP TO 30%

* SALARY REDUCTION DEPENDING ON THEIR CURRENT SALARY SCALES, WITH LOWEST EARNERS AFFECTED LEAS

* EXPECTS REDUCED GLOBAL OIL PRICES TO HELP TO CUSHION FINANCIAL IMPACT OF FORECAST LOWER PASSENGER DEMAND WHEN OPERATIONS RESTART

* TIMELINES DISPOSAL OF CO’S HOLDING IN FASTJET ZIMBABWE ARE NO LONGER PRACTICALLY ACHIEVABLE

* FASTJET ZIMBABWE HAS FULLY PAID OFF ALL OF ITS EMBRAER EMB145 AIRCRAFT

* INVESTOR CONSORTIUM CONFIRMED THAT IT REMAINS COMMITTED TO DIVESTMENT PROPOSAL

* INVESTOR CONSORTIUM INDICATED THAT IT WOULD POTENTIALLY FORESEE MODIFIED TERMS OF SALE NEEDING TO BE DISCUSSED, NEGOTIATED

* FASTJET ZIMBABWE’S UNFLOWN FORWARD TICKET SALES OBLIGATION WAS US$ 616,476 AS OF 31 MARCH, MUCH LOWER THAN TRADITIONALLY EXPERIENCED

* FEDAIR HAS ENTERED A RESTRUCTURING PROCESS

* RESTRUCTURING PROCESS OF FEDAIR WILL RESULT IN 55% OF ITS FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES BEING RETRENCHED

* IN 55% OF ITS FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES WILL BE RETRENCHED IN FEDAIR

* SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF 14 AIRCRAFT FLEET HAS BEEN TERMINATED BY FEDAIR

* FEDAIR SEEN DRAMATIC DOWNTURN IN FORWARD TICKET SALES & RESERVATIONS & MAJORITY OF PASSENGERS THAT WERE BOOKED HAVE DEFERRED THEIR TRAVEL

* FEDAIR HAS RETAINED LIMITED CREW TO OPERATE THESE SIX AIRCRAFT, WHICH WILL BE CORE FLEET RETAINED FOR REMAINDER OF 2020

* FEDAIR IN TALKS WITH AIRCRAFT FINANCIERS RELATING TO OWNED AIRCRAFT TO SUSPEND & DEFER CAPITAL REPAYMENTS ON AIRCRAFT LOANS UNTIL DEC 2020

* FEDAIR WOULD NEED ADDITIONAL CASHFLOW OF APPROXIMATELY US$ 1.0M BY 31 DECEMBER 2020

* BOARD IS REASSESSING GOING CONCERN ABILITY OF ENTIRE GROUP IN ITS CURRENT FORM, WITH BOTH FEDAIR AND FASTJET ZIMBABWE BUSINESSES RETAINED

* GROUP WILL CONTINUE TO HAVE SUFFICIENT RESOURCES TO MEET ITS OPERATIONAL NEEDS UNTIL END OF JUNE 2020

* IF UNABLE TO COMPLETE DISPOSAL/RAISE FURTHER NEW CAPITAL BY 30 JUNE DIRECTORS BELIEVE GROUP TO BE UNABLE TO CONTINUE TRADING AS GOING CONCERN

* FEDAIR WOULD NEED ADDITIONAL CASHFLOW OF APPROXIMATELY US$ 1.0M BY 31 DECEMBER 2020 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

Post published in: Business

Health workers screen people visiting a public hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe [Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP]