Category: News Feeds

For the past few years, law student recruitment for summer associate programs has been incredibly successful, harkening back to the pre-recession era. The 2019 cycle was only different than usual in that its outcomes were even better than last year’s historic trends.

According to the latest law student recruiting figures from the National Association of Law Placement (NALP), offer rates from Biglaw summer programs have reached brand new historic highs. Not only did the aggregate offer rate jump to almost 98 percent (slightly better than last year’s historic high of nearly 97 percent), but the acceptance rate for those offers was 88 percent, the same as last year’s historic high. What’s even more exciting is that this historic acceptance rate is significantly higher than acceptance rates measured before the recession, which tended to hover between about 73 to 77 percent. On the other hand, the average size of summer associate classes at the largest of law firms fell slightly from 14 to 13. Here’s what James Leipold, NALP’s executive director, had to say about the latest figures:

What these data suggest is that in the more than 10 years following the Great Recession, law firms steadily rebuilt their summer programs and entry-level recruiting pipeline, but that regrowth has now definitively been capped, and in some cases firms have begun to implement a gentle taper, perhaps in anticipation of some economic uncertainty ahead.

Speaking of economic uncertainty…

Last week we wondered if the coronavirus would lead to a situation where upcoming summer programs would possibly be postponed or even canceled outright. Leipold says that hasn’t happened yet, in terms of rescinding offers or anything of that nature, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anxiety in the air. From Law.com:

“I don’t think canceling summer programs is what’s going to happen,” he said. “But I think if firms are still stuck in remote work, they’ll be thinking, ‘OK, what does that look like for a summer associate who has never worked here? How do we train them? How do we give them virtual assignments? How do we have social bonding when we can’t come into work?’ I think those are the questions being asked right now for the incoming summer class.” …

“Nobody has really made a decision,” Leipold said of how firms will handle the incoming summer associate class and upcoming recruiting season. “Firms are grappling with that right now. I think firms will make good faith efforts to honor their commitments under the present circumstances. There’s not enough information in the marketplace yet to know how all of this will play out. But it will certainly have an impact on everything.”

Either way, congratulations to all law students who went through the recruitment cycle in 2019, as things seem to have worked out great for them. Cross your fingers that they actually get the summer associate experience that they expected to receive.

Summer Associate Hiring Was Strong, but COVID-19 Prompts Uncertainty Ahead [Law.com]

---

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.

It’s very hard to find anything positive about the pandemic that we are now in. But if this forces us to be creative about how we deliver legal services, then a collateral consequence of all this may not be all bad. Of course, lawyers and the profession are not known for being proactive or anything close to that. We are masters of the reactive, the “let’s wait and see,” and similar foot-dragging sentiments.

COVID-19 is forcing our hand, and I, for one, don’t think that’s a bad thing for the profession. If one of the things we should be doing is to make legal services more affordable and more accessible, then COVID-19 may prompt, indeed, mandate changes in our thinking and delivery of those services.

As just one example, some ADR providers in Southern California are now offering the option to attend mediation via videoconferencing. I know mediators, including me, would prefer to see the “whites of their eyes” so to speak, but right now, in the times of social distancing, that’s not the best idea. Anything to make the legal process work better and more economically is what works for clients. I only wish that more lawyers would see that; of course, it’s not in our economic self-interest.

Los Angeles is not the only city with lousy traffic. Having to pay counsel for time spent in the car traveling to and from mediation is not the most effective use of that time. I don’t have to explain the benefits of videoconferencing, and if I do, then shame on you. I used videoconferencing in a mediation fifteen years ago when my client was here in SoCal and the other side was in Nashville. It resolved. My client put more on the table (and I am talking cash, not rolls of toilet paper) and the other side was willing to accept less due to reduced expense.

Logistics play a major part right now. The Los Angeles Superior Court, the largest trial court in the country, is, among other things, continuing civil jury trials for thirty days and postponing criminal jury trials where statutory time has been waived for at least thirty days.

Courts will remain open for emergency hearings, including domestic violence restraining orders and other legal matters that cannot wait. Will the delays in civil trials prompt more resolutions? We’ll have to wait and see.

In an interview this past January (it was a different world then, at least to me), the legal technology guru and author Richard Susskind spoke of the significant challenges and difficulties that courts around the world face (and this was before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold). He thinks that online courts could be the answer to the access to justice issue.

How many times have we told clients, potential or otherwise, that the economic value of a case does not justify litigation? How many times have we advised clients to resolve a matter, rather than going through the expenses of litigation? How many times have we suggested to clients that for very small matters, take it to small claims court and remit any amount in the jurisdictional excess? It rankles a client who thinks that she has a good, albeit small, case and she wants to tell her story.

Susskind’s suggestion for online courts is twofold: the first, which lawyers will not like, is the submission of evidence and arguments in an “asynchronous” hearing system. While he concedes that this process may not work for all cases, he does think it’s a better use of everyone’s time to resolve what he calls “relatively modest difficulties and differences.”

His second suggestion is that it should be part of the court’s job to provide tools so that nonlawyers can better understand their rights and obligations and provide ways for parties to resolve disputes among themselves. The Family Law Department of the Los Angeles Superior Court put into effect last summer an online dispute resolution tool for parenting plan agreements.

Every little step takes us closer to where we need to be in order to provide better access to justice. I would imagine that courts elsewhere have similar programs, at least I hope so.

Susskind says that we have the ability through technology to help nonlawyers access legal information and documentation. The goal is to improve access to justice, rather than perfect it, at least now right now.

The question Susskind asks is whether the court “is a service or a place?” Here in Los Angeles County, it took years and years for Court Call to be acceptable as an alternative to in-person appearances for such mundane matters as case conferences, trial settings, and the like. Some judges here were also resistant to telephone appearances; of course, they didn’t have to bill the clients for the hours spent in court on those mundane matters.

As if to underscore Susskind’s comment that it’s so easy to take potshots at recommendations to improve access to justice, the State Bar of California just essentially put the kibosh on task force recommendations to try to improve that access, which suggested taking baby steps, ironically called a “regulatory sandbox.” While the official line is that “political headwinds” have put the brakes on those recommendations, this seems to be one more example of the ostrich-like thinking that permeates California bar leadership.

As Susskind points out, compete or help build emerging systems. To compete will leave lawyers in the dust sooner or later. It may seem superficially safe to cling to the status quo, but as we are finding out, the status quo doesn’t work anymore.

---

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

Remember when that school took a black Sharpie and colored in a black student’s hair because they decided they didn’t like his fade? Sadly, we probably have to be more specific since this is the kind of racist bullshit happens in this country every day. Remember when that school around Houston took a black Sharpie and colored in a black student’s hair because they decided they didn’t like his fade? Well, the court ruled on the Motion to Dismiss this week and it was mostly, though not entirely, bad news for the fabric of the nation.

Sometimes damning stories like this one die a slow death when the sluggish wheels of the justice system drag out long past the national attention span. The 24-hour news cycle wreaks enough havoc with new injustices piling up every day and when an election and plague get thrown into the mix, it’s easy to lose track of a story.

Frankly, this one only serendipitously returned to my radar. Magistrate Judge Andrew Edison joined the ranks of judges I keep tabs on last week with an all-timer of a benchslap. This week, he’s got a much more sobering opinion. It’s a tragic account of where the legal system breaks down at the intersection of race and rights and one where Judge Edison managed to express his dismay for the defendants while still finding his hands tied by pleadings and precedent.

Recounting the facts of the case, Judge Edison explains that school officials confronted a black seventh-grader with a thin part shaved into his haircut and claimed that they felt this violated the school dress code banning “carvings, mohawks, spikes, etc.” At that point, after threatening the child with suspension, the school officials took a toxic permanent marker and began coloring in his part despite warnings that the product should not be used on skin. All of this was done without consulting the parents and the child alleges the officials were laughing as they did it. The defendants dispute that but Judge Edison points out that all their denials miss the most important point:

What happened next defies all logic, commonsense, and, in my estimation, common decency. [I recognize that Defendants dispute many of J.T.’s factual allegations. However, there is no dispute that J.T.’s scalp was in fact colored with a Sharpie. To the extent that I express any criticism in this opinion, it is related to this unfortunate, undisputed fact.]

At the end of the day, Judge Edison cites Justice Scalia who once said, “he wished all federal judges were given a stamp that read ‘stupid but constitutional.’” The assault claim against the individual administrators survived the Motion to Dismiss, but the various constitutional claims didn’t. The Due Process claim failed because the plaintiff has a state law remedy in the form of his assault claim. The Equal Protection and Civil Rights Act claims seemingly failed due to how they were pleaded, forcing the case into “stupid but constitutional” territory.

But to paraphrase Dean Wormer, “stupid but constitutional is no way to go through life.”

Because the plaintiffs were put between a rock and a hard place here.

The Amended Complaint frames the Equal Protection claim this way:

“Defendant[s] acted arbitrarily in their actions against [him] and treated him differently than those with other hairstyles and similarly situated white students thereby violating [his] right to the equal protection of the laws.”

This is almost certainly true, but there’s no way of knowing if the school officials have acted differently than they treat a white kid violating the policy and that’s critical to make that allegation work as written.

We all know what the plaintiffs mean though. Sure, the individual defendants may not have been denying the child “equal protection” at the moment they decided to color in his fade. But the school almost certainly did when it decided on a code that makes a popular African-American hair style “extreme” and subject to punishment. Does the school expect a lot of white kids to come in with Mohawks and start humming The Ramones in 2020? Banning “carvings, mohawks, spikes, etc.” is not a race-neutral policy. Judge Edison almost seems to nod to that at the top of the opinion going out of his way to explain that the style “is extremely common among African Americans” and citing a popular recent children’s book on the subject but he just couldn’t push this over the hill of the particular pleading. We know hairstyle policies are constitutionally problematic with federal agencies and the courts on both sides of the question.

The Catch-22 breakdown here is that, probably worried that the Fifth Circuit wouldn’t embrace hair discrimination claims, the plaintiffs tried to reach the issue a different way — but that way didn’t actually make sense. And this is pretty much always the way: plaintiffs are cut off from challenging the policy by precedent and cut off from challenging the practice by the fact that the policy is specifically written to ensure there’s never a similarly situated white student. It puts some of the most pernicious acts of racial discrimination permanently locked in the “stupid but constitutional” category.

At least the assault claims against the individual school officials survives another day. Except, as addressed in a footnote, Texas doesn’t recognize claims like these against school districts and there is precedent “[H]olding that claims based on conduct within the scope of employment is not a suit against the employee; it is in all but name only, a suit against the government unit.” This wasn’t part of the Motion to Dismiss but you can all but guarantee there will come a day soon where they get these tossed on that argument and then… well, then where is the state law remedy needed to cure the Due Process claim?

Catch-22 all over again.

(Read the full opinion on the next page…)

Earlier: Amazing, Self-Deprecating Benchslap For Attorneys Who Couldn’t Figure Out Which Federal Judge They Had

---

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.

Larry Klayman, the OG vexatious litigant who literally sued his own mother, has just filed a federal claim against China for coronavirus. Because… 2020.

Sure, lots of weirdos talk smack on Reddit about COVID-19 being an illegal bioweapon which escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But only Larry Klayman is willing to draft an actual federal suit based on a 4chan conspiracy theory. Because Uncle Larry isn’t going to let a young whippersnapper like Devin Nunes take his title as America’s premier purveyor of bullshit lawsuits!

The named plaintiff is Texas’s Buzz Photos, which specializes in high school sports photos and purports to have “lost about $50,000 over the last weekend alone.” Klayman himself is both a party to the suit and the lawyer filing the purported class action, because why ever not? In it, he charges the Chinese Government, the People’s Liberation Army, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Institute’s Director Shi Zhengli with wrongful death, assault and battery, material support for terrorism, negligence, and a conspiracy to injure and kill Americans.

Klayman’s claims, such as they are, rest on a Washington Times interview with virologist Dany Shoham, of Israel’s Bar Ilan University, who speculates that, “In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but so far there isn’t evidence or indication for such incident.”

Here on Planet Earth, the general consensus is that the virus jumped to humans as wild animals were butchered for sale at Wuhan’s “wet market.” The Wuhan Institute of Virology was the first to identify and publish the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus and match it to samples taken from horseshoe bats in southwest China. Which is not entirely consistent with Mr. Klayman’s theory that the Institute created the disease as an illegal bioweapon and accidentally unleashed it, killing tens of thousands of their own countrymen and crashing the Chinese economy.

If we could separate it from the president’s “China virus” racism, pressuring China to keep these markets closed permanently would keep us all safer. The government has recently banned the sale and consumption of wild animals, which is great. But a similar ban imposed after the 2003 SARS outbreak was gradually relaxed, with the present disastrous effect.

Check out this video from Vox for a non-racist take on the subject.

And if you’re home day-drinking, what the hell, read this idiotic lawsuit, too. Have at it!

Buzz Photos v. People’s Republic of China [Class Action Complaint, No. 3:20-cv-00656-K (N. D. Tex., March 17, 2020)]
Dallas federal lawsuit accuses Chinese government of creating coronavirus as ‘biological weapon’ [Dallas Morning News]
Virus-hit Wuhan has two laboratories linked to Chinese bio-warfare program [Washington Times]

---

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

The law school pass/fail bandwagon is officially pulling out of the station! Amid the movement of law schools to online education, students are, perhaps rightly, concerned about the potential impact on their GPAs.

And it makes sense. Professors are certainly doing the best they can, but they had little warning or opportunity to prepare for taking their classes online. Students are also trying to make it work, but their study environment has been blown to hell, and even for the most dedicated student, a pandemic makes for a shitty backdrop for academic excellence.

Law schools, well, some of them, have responded by taking the pressure off. Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, University of Michigan Law School, UC Berkeley School of Law, and Cornell Law School have all moved to some version of a pass/fail option. The programs differ by school — for example Michigan and Harvard allow students to opt into pass/fail grades — but the message is clear, the spring 2020 semester is unlike any other.

Berkeley Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky said the pass/fail system was the “fairest, most compassionate, and most equitable” way to deal with the upheaval surrounding COVID-19. Stanford Law dean Jenny Martinez announced that law school was moving to a “mandatory pass” basis for the quarter on the day the Bay Area shelter in place order was given, saying:

In light of the fact that some people have already taken exams over the last few days, some are in the middle of taking an exam today as this news is breaking, and others may now have weeks more to study, with substantially different disruptions in the next two weeks based on whether people are staying here on or off campus confined to their rooms or apartments, traveling to other parts of the country or globe in the next few days, etc., all exam classes for Winter Quarter will be graded on an MP basis.

But there is a potential downside to the move. As Gavin White, global hiring partner at Skadden, told Law.com, this will likely impact the summer associate opportunities students will have:

“Unless we change the timetable for hiring, you are hiring off of one semester of grades,” he said. “That probably hurts the students who have a less-than-stellar first semester, but otherwise would have been able to show an improvement for the second semester. They are sort of being robbed of that opportunity. That’s something we look at at—particularly students who don’t come from a privileged background may have a slower start at law school, but they figure it out in the second semester.”

Your heart really has to go out to students who find themselves in this lose/lose situation. And it’s something Cornell Law recognized when they made their announcement moving to the pass/fail system:

“We do sympathize with those students who would have done better in second semester than first, but we cannot accommodate that concern without incurring still greater costs,” the memo reads. “We hope to mitigate the harm somewhat by including a notation on transcripts and not calculating cumulative rank at the end of the current academic year.”

But White suggests there is another way to deal with the dearth of grading information:

“If you only have one semester of grades, it’s hard to get a meaningful and realistic assessment of someone’s academic performance,” White said. “What I would really like to see is schools move on-campus interviews into January and February, where we would have 2L fall grades.”

But that seems to be the opposite of the on-campus recruitment trend. Law schools, particularly elite ones, seem to be falling all over themselves to give students an even earlier opportunity to interview with Biglaw firms. And with the National Association for Law Placement’s (NALP) new hands-off position on recruitment, it’s unlikely we’ll see such a massive change to the overall system.

---

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).

This week, the unprecedented happened: life as we knew it ground to a halt as COVID-19 descended upon our country. In many states, nonessential businesses were forced to close, people were strongly encouraged to practice “social distancing” by avoiding public places and gatherings, and all but the most essential court proceedings were adjourned indefinitely.

As the virus quickly took hold, businesses closed their doors and, to the extent that it was was possible, sent their employees home to work remotely. For many law firms, this sudden departure from business as usual was an unexpected — and unwelcome — wake-up call, since only a small minority were set up for widespread remote work.

As a result, the focus in online lawyer discussion groups changed overnight, with lawyers sharing their concerns about whether their firms would survive the mandated closures. Others sought advice on the remote working tools that would be necessary to set up a remote law firm, such as video conferencing platforms, VOIP phone systems, and law practice management software. Not surprisingly, the same phenomenon was occurring offline as well.

Additionally, as courts closed their doors to all but the most essential legal proceedings, administrative judges grappled with pressing access to justice issues. Like most law firms, few courts are set up to handle video arraignments and remote court appearances. As a result, courts across the country are scrambling to identify technology solutions that can be used to ensure that our most fundamental constitutional rights are protected, even in the midst of a pandemic.

For a change, previously Luddite members of the legal profession are looking to technology to solve their problems. I guess it really is true: desperate times call for desperate measures.

It reminds me a lot of the rush to develop and use ediscovery software in the wake of the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 2006. It was only because of court mandate that lawyers shifted gears and began to rapidly adopt ediscovery tools. So much so that in 2020, the ediscovery software is now a multibillion-dollar industry.

Notably, there’s a big difference between then and now: today the technology needed for remote work has already been built. It’s readily available to the legal industry and has been for years. Law firms and courts simply need to take advantage of it. Remote work is an achievable and realistic goal: the bionic law firm (or court proceeding, as the case may be) is within your reach. You just need to reach out and grab it.

Here’s how to make it happen. First, take stock of your current technology assets, including hardware and software. Determine your law firm’s needs and identify the technology that will be needed in order for all law firm staff to work remotely.

For most firms, this means you’ll need to invest in cloud-based law practice management software. With this type of software, all of you law firm’s information will be located in one location. Typically, as I explain in this ABA Journal article, this includes, among other things: 1) contacts and calendars, 2) invoicing and time-tracking, 3) documents and other matter-related data, 4) internal and external communications, and 5) financial data. Some legal practice management systems even include built-in esignature capabilities, lead management tools, integrated email, two-way text messaging, and secure communication and collaboration tools like a client portal.

In most cases, you’ll also need to invest in some of the tools and software that I’ve written about in my ABA Journal column over the years, including: 1) video conferencing software, 2) a VOIP phone system, 3) an online fax service, 4)  document scanning tools, 5) collaborative word processing software, and 6) speech-to-text dictation software.

Once you’ve chosen the tools you need to set up a remote workforce, the next step is to prioritize the training of your employees. Make sure that they understand the features of the software you’ve chosen and how to integrate it into their workflows. Additionally, set expectations by providing them with guidelines designed to help them implement the software into their daily routine. Finally, ensure that everyone working remotely understands client confidentiality issues and uses the chosen software for all client matters.

My fellow lawyers: you’ve got this. We have the technology. Remote work is easily accomplished in 2020. With the right tools, you can rebuild your bricks-and-mortar law firm and turn it into a virtual one. Your clients are relying on you, and the technology you need is readily available, affordable, intuitive, and, most importantly, it will get the job done. So what are you waiting for? Get back to work!

---

Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

Thanks to a global pandemic, law firms have made remote work plans for their employees to flatten the curve and stop the rapid spread of COVID-19. Contract attorneys, however, are facing a much different reality in this time of disease.

Above the Law has received many tips from these attorneys, lamenting the sorry state of affairs they’ve been working under in cities across the country. Here are some of their stories.

Despite the ability to securely and efficiently perform document review online, many legal staffing agencies are refusing to allow employees to work remotely. So, the only option we have, if we want to continue earning money, is to go into the review centers.

Unfortunately, most of the review centers are hot beds for the spread of this virus. Most review centers are either open-space work environments that are densely packed with desks and people, or are small rooms densely packed with desks and people. And, by densely packed I mean, attorneys are placed next to one another with less than one foot of space. Both of these types of spaces are a recipe for disaster in this current environment.

I am in NYC and not currently working out of fear of exposure to the Covid19 and management has refused to address worker or potential worker concerns. Companies like [REDACTED] have tightly packed sardine facilities and expect workers to come in with a copy and paste Covid19 email blast which does not address the underlying issues.

As a document review attorney, you have to apply for at least 10 agencies in order to have constant work. But the majority of time you stay home a few days or weeks between projects. During this time, you don’t get paid so you have to apply for unemployment benefits which is not enough to survive.

Most of the time you get paid for your work between $28 and $33 an hour without benefits such as healthcare etc. As an attorney with student loans and a family and mortgage, it is very difficult to survive with this money. Especially when you are the only person earning in the family.

Coronavirus made it even more difficult for us to get on a project now. I have applied for unemployment, but the $370ish a week I get is not sufficient to pay my bills and mortgage.

[REDACTED’s] downtown office has a lot of reviewers. Our client has considered the possibility of remote work but ultimately rejected the option. I am not sure if they rejected that option for their own associates too.

I am young and probably will not be affected, but if I unknowingly carry the virus and infect my much older colleagues, that’s an unconscionable position. And there’s a lot of older attorneys in my project, who are at much greater risk.

I hope you will help us start a public discussion of this second class citizen treatment in the legal field.

People have been campaigning [REDACTED] to offer remote work since they are notorious for having people work in close proximity. Instead of granting that option, they sent out a ridiculous email saying they will determine if social distancing is appropriate, asking people to self-identify their travel status (as if that matters because the damn virus is here in NYC which has the largest number of confirmed cases in the country) and then attempting to downplay the seriousness of this illness (and it is serious and highly infectious) by mentioning how many more people die from the flu.

We are currently still required to report to work despite there being more than 25 people present in very close working conditions. This is work that could be conducted remotely and is being conducted remotely by other document review companies. It is irresponsible and many attorneys present have elderly parents or children at home who have been sent home due to school closings.

I’ve worked as a contract attorney in NYC for some time and there is a growing problem across the country with agencies denying contract attorneys the right to work from home. There are contract attorneys quitting projects because they are expected to work in a shared workspace where everyone is sitting in close proximity, agencies are asking for contract attorneys to provide travel history which is irrelevant since the virus is already here. In many cases they are outright refusing the opportunity to work remotely.

It’s time we stood up for contract attorneys. To be quite frank, it’s unforgivable that people are expected to work in environments where their close contact could mean the possibility of contracting a critical illness. We can’t risk anyone’s health for the sake of litigation. This second-class treatment is not appropriate — especially now.

Please do what you can to help contract attorneys. Call a staffing agency today and let them know they need to do the right thing and offer remote work opportunities.

---

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.

There are two types of prisoners — the ones who’ve been convicted of crimes and the ones who haven’t and are merely in jail because they can’t afford bail to get out while they await trial.

Both sets of prisoners are affected by quarantines caused by the coronavirus.  But for those who haven’t yet been found guilty and want their cases to move along as quickly as possible, tensions are running high.

Their court cases have now been postponed a minimum of two months. Jury trials in New York and at least 20 other states have been suspended. Cases are being rescheduled without the defendant or his lawyer in court. Inmates awaiting trial are feeling angry, frustrated, and uncertain. Who’s watching out for them?

Lawyers are no longer allowed to visit their clients in any federal prison and many state jails. Families and friends cannot visit. Inside, rumors abound.

Many fear the prison workforce, at least in New York State, will be cut by 50 percent pursuant to the governor’s mandate that half of state workers stay home.

Calls I get from jail are panicked. If there’s a staff shortage, inmates fear their phone calls –- the one lifeline they have with the outside world –- will be suspended or significantly curtailed. They’re worried about how their families are doing. Whether anyone’s sick or lost a job.

They’re worried for their own health. Some fear the guards they come in contact with are not properly screened and may be virus carriers. Because many inmates sleep in “dorms” -– giant rooms with rows of 20 beds just a foot and half apart, they cannot socially distance themselves. If the guy in the next bed coughs, he won’t be wearing a face mask.

One client at Rikers told me, “Things are so bad in here, I think a riot is going to break out.”

I reassured him that of all populations, prisoners might be the best protected. Most are healthy young men who work out every day, remain isolated from the general population and follow a routine in a controlled environment. It didn’t do a lot to soothe him.

He wanted to know when his case would go to trial. I told him that I didn’t know.

Of the thousands of inmates convicted and now serving time in state or federal prisons, many are older guys finishing off long sentences and thus most susceptible to the worst consequences of the virus. If sick, they fear the treatment they’ll receive will be inadequate.

As for New York City, which normally processes thousands of criminal cases a day, no defendants will be brought to court from jail unless absolutely necessary. Cases involving people out of jail are being adjourned to mid-June or later. Only a few court parts are functioning, and no one but “essential” personal is being granted court entry.

Thankfully, I’m not “essential.” I stay home, take walks, answer my clients’ questions as best I can and try to focus on ongoing work like motions, discovery, and legal research. But I worry about my clients.

I urge them all to stay calm and focused. Instead of becoming an agitator, maybe one of them could become a leader who keeps things copacetic in jail.  This would help him down the road in plea negotiations.

The time they spend now in jail (although it must feel like limbo) will be credited to them if, ultimately, they’re convicted. But if they’re hoping for their case to be tried speedily or for the prosecutor’s office to be held to its burden of going to trial within a set statutory period post-arrest, that’s all been waived by government decree.

For those hoping to eventually be acquitted –- hang in there. You’ll see a jury someday. It’s just going to take a little longer.

---

Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.

Italy’s little coronavirus problem may be a bit more pressing at the moment, but in terms of longevity it’s got nothing on the country’s banks. Indeed, it’s fair to say that Italian banks have been in some kind of crisis or other since the fall of the Medici, and one that’s been particularly acute since the global financial crisis. Recently, however, there has been some evidence that at least the critical phase had passed. Still, these are Italian banks, and as such remain vulnerable to relapse in case of political instability, economic difficulties or a particularly virulent cold shutting down the entire country.

* Three Utah County prosecutors have resigned after a defense attorney paid for their tickets to see the Utah Jazz. If you’re going to forfeit your job over some graft, it should be way more valuable than some measly basketball tickets… [Salt Lake Tribune]

* The attorney at the heart of the New Rochelle COVID-19 cluster is awake and recovering well. [New York Post]

* Netflix is facing a lawsuit filed by the prosecutor involved in the infamous Central Park jogger case because the Netflix series dramatizing the matter allegedly depicted the prosecutor in a bad light. [Guardian]

* Katy Perry has defeated a lawsuit alleging that she plagiarized one of her songs from a Christian artist. There’s a South Park reference in here somewhere… [Christian Post]

* A company that bought Theranos patents is using them to sue a company that is working on COVID-19 tests. Seems like a worthy legacy for Theranos. [Business Insider]

* The Baltimore State’s Attorney will stop prosecuting drug possession, prostitution, and other crimes because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This would have made a great plot line in The Wire. [Baltimore Sun]

---

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.