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During the coronavirus crisis, we’re all learning to deal in our own ways with uncertainty. Some of us have found that we thrive in chaos; most however, are struggling to maintain order and some semblance of regularity while the ground underneath shifts enormously every day.

Dealing with uncertainty effectively is a skill especially worth perfecting for lawyers. And it’s especially critical for in-house lawyers, whose decisions have a direct impact on business and their ability to weather turbulence and change of all kinds. When change or uncertainty strikes –- and as the saying goes: the only certainty is uncertainty –- it is in-house lawyers who are on the front lines.

Here are some of my observations for how lawyers can deal effectively with uncertainty.

Accept — Even Embrace — Your Fear

We are going through changes. Many of us know someone who has experienced serious health concerns. Going to a grocery store has become, to many, a life-threatening risk. The economy is on the brink of collapse. The news channels are gloomy. Many companies are not meeting their targets and face real financial pressures. Many graduates are worried about their once-certain job prospects. Many general counsels are planning layoffs and furloughs. Many colleagues have already been laid off.

Get Social And Supportive

Everyone I know is going over their own worst-case scenario on repeat. In my recent conversation with Colin Levin, corporate counsel at Salary.com and a legal blogger who focuses on in-house and legal tech issues, he discusses the importance of recognizing that these emotions, including fear, are normal. These emotions are shared by all of us. And it is a great idea to seek support and not feel isolated.

Just because many of us are sheltering in place does not mean that we must be isolated. I have embraced the concept of virtual meals, coffees, and happy hours. In the process, I reconnected with my colleagues and friends. I also finally deepened my relationships with professionals that I met on LinkedIn but have never actually spoken to.

The Abundance Of Predictions Is Highly Correlated With A Degree Of Uncertainty

My LinkedIn feed, inbox, and conversations are full of predictions. We are going through changes -– that much is clear. Will our world and working lives be completely disrupted and transformed forever? Does the change have to be so big to have such an outsized impact? Whether we are in the middle of evolution or revolution, times are hard today. It is okay to not know what the future holds. We can be patient. Do our best today. Observe. Stay open and curious. Lean in.

Focus On The Opportunities And Advantages You Gained

In times of uncertainty, I find it very helpful to focus on what I’ve gained as opposed to what I’ve lost. For example, in this coronavirus pandemic, I have gained more sleep, regular exercise, and unprecedented levels of productivity because I no longer commute to work. This focus on gains, as opposed to losses, will help you see the silver lining and opportunities that were not available to you and your business before.

Back To Basics Are A Good Way To Anchor Yourself And Your Organization

In uncertain times, general counsel and legal departments return to the basics. Based on my conversations, an unrepresentative sample of general counsels seem to care about the following three basics — systems, safety, and stability. For example, when it comes to systems, general counsel and in-house lawyers ask where the organization still has access to servers to keep the critical business operations up. With safety, they tend to confirm the security and privacy measures to avoid losses. And with stability, many in-house lawyers assure financial stability through numerous measures including interpreting the CARES Act. Basics are important. In the end, these basics make a huge difference between the businesses’ ability to survive and thrive during storms.

Uncertainty doesn’t have to spell doom. It can provide perspective and even an opportunity to rethink how businesses are run. I suggest giving yourself space to feel all the feelings that will arise during this unprecedented global pandemic and to use the change it has set in motion to re-evaluate your mindset and the fundamentals of your business.

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

I had my first post-Covid-19 virtual court date last week. I was requesting bond for a client, not yet tried but accused of attempted murder and gun trafficking. Admittedly, the charges are very serious, but my client actually has a defense and would like to go to trial. Who knows when that’s likely to happen.

He’d allegedly fired a gun toward a man who’d threatened him and was also carrying a weapon. Both exchanged gun shots across a residential street in New York City. Thankfully, no one was hurt. My client has been in jail since August 2018. He has been remanded. That means no amount of bail could get him out. I scheduled a virtual hearing so a judge might consider setting some bail, even high, just so my client, Jose, wouldn’t be subjected to the coronavirus Petri dish that Rikers (and other prisons) have become.

He has strong family ties, had never missed a court or parole date on a prior case he had, and according to letters from his family is a good dad to his five children and a hard worker. Even police on his arrest praised him as being “an upright guy,” good on his word, not trying to create problems. They wished there were more like him.

We Skyped the bail hearing. We were each in our respective homes –- judge, court reporter, and prosecutor. Only the court clerk was in a recognizable place, inside the court room.

My client and his family were hoping some bail would be set. They could afford as much as a $50,000 bond. It was important this happen now because my client also suffers several conditions that would make contracting COVID-19 potentially lethal for him.

He’s had asthma since a child, is using two different medications, has been hospitalized for TB, and suffers anxiety attacks that make breathing difficult in anxiety-prone situations even when he’s not in the midst an asthma attack.

He reported that conditions inside Rikers are deteriorating rapidly. An inmate last week was so distraught he pulled out his own eye — twice (the second time after it had been replaced). Inmates have been rioting and guards have been spraying them with “chemical agents” (my client’s medical records show) to subdue disturbances. This, of course, provokes everyone sprayed to have respiratory problems, coughing, sneezing, and runny eyes, but hits prisoners with asthma particularly hard.

I laid out my arguments to the judge telling her my client had a secure place to live and that his family could make substantial bail — more than enough to ensure he’d return for his case.

The judge denied my application. Apparently, according to her, everyone in the world is feeling “anxiety” and being at Rikers shouldn’t make my client more anxious than anyone else. The prosecutor argued that intermittent asthma that’s listed as “under control” in my client’s chart, doesn’t count as a pre-existing condition that could exacerbate any danger he faces from COVID-19.

Part of me wanted to say, and if Jose was your son, would you feel the same?  But I didn’t. The judge already felt sufficiently well informed about how Rikers was doing a competent job keeping inmates safe. Hmmm.

Last week’s story about an inmate in Florida who was released due to COVID-19 didn’t help. Apparently, upon gaining his freedom, he allegedly shot and killed someone and was promptly rearrested. But this appears to be the exception not the rule. According to reports, most people being released from jail due to the COVID-19 outbreak are staying quarantined and out of trouble. I’d like to see a story (which I’m sure are out there) about prisoners not granted bail who contracted COVID-19 in jail and got seriously ill or even died.

My client cannot make bail because none was set. However, there are ways to help people who can’t afford bail and for whom even $500 is too high an amount. Last week a woman charged with a misdemeanor and being held at Rikers died due to complications of epilepsy. Her bail was only $500.

In an editorial last week in the New York Times, Neil Barsky, chairman and founder of the Marshall Project, listed a few national foundations set up to help people bail out of jail. Among them: the Bail Project and the National Bail Fund Network.  A client told me about the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which had helped my client’s friend get out. I called them and am waiting to hear back.

All these organizations take contributions.

According to the most recent data (dated April 19) from the Legal Aid Society’s tracking of Rikers inmates: 9.11% has tested positive for COVID-19 (and they haven’t tested everyone.) That compares to 1.59% in the population of New York City and 0.23% in the country in general.

Based on my experience, judges aren’t sticking their necks out to release pretrial prisoners, and prosecutors are adhering to their old rubric -– jailed inmates should be kept there, no matter the danger.

The only people who can make a difference are individuals who contribute money to bail foundations. If the presumption of innocence means anything, it’s got to mean an inmate can make it to trial without getting seriously ill or even dying due to a virus that prisons are ill-equipped to manage.

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

Cease and desist letters and responses, along with straight-up demand letters, provide the most entertaining legal moments. While the pre-litigation dance is a serious juncture in any dispute, this period without judges and rules lording over the process gives attorneys the freedom to show off their craft. Obviously no lawyer letter is going to top Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein’s infamous response to the porn star seeking recompense after being thrown off a building — yes, this is a thing that really happened — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still works of breathtaking legal beauty being churned out by attorneys across the country.

For example, this letter about human feces.

More accurately, this letter about competing products that attempt to improve the aftermath of a trip to the toilet. A certain Toilet Elixir known as Turdcules was forced to draft a cease and desist letter to their competitor Poo-Pourri over an incident at a trade show. According to the letter, Poo-Pourri placed banners mimicking the Turdcules trademark look with phrases like “Classy Original,” “No Crass Bearded Men,” and “No Toxic Ingredients,” all seemingly denigrating Turdcules products.

Attorney Kevin Christopher’s letter addresses these attacks in turn and the result is exactly the snicker-inducing humor we need now.

As to the insinuation that Poo-Pourri is the “classy” product:

If my numbers are correct, Poo-Pourri has had 6x as many marks as Turdcules rejected or suspended as “immoral” and/or “scandalous” under the now overturned Section 2(a) limitation of the Lanham Act. I suppose anyone or any entity can self-define as classy, even those who want exclusive rights to bandy about such refined cocktail terms as “brown load” and “yule logs.” If, however, your intent is to distinguish that Poo-Pourri is classy and Turdcules is not, just remember at the end of the day both companies sell poop spray, not diamonds.

The bearded man reference is to the Turdcules mascot “The Craptain” which is amazing.

Regardless, you seem to be insinuating that Turdcules’ spokesman The Craptain^TM is crass, which, if made with intent to ridicule, is the very definition of libel. In fact, The Craptain is just the opposite of crass. He’s the epitome of Southern grace and manners.

He’s sensitive. Using Turdcules isn’t for him, it’s for those around him.

He’s refined. He loves the smell of his own brand over his own waste streams. He’s intelligent.

He is an ordained minister and always leaves the toilet seat down.

But the best is saved for last, where Turdcules addresses the insinuation that its products may be toxic while Poo-Pourri’s are not — a claim that seems fundamentally off:

Then I had to take a step back and ask myself: What The Funk? Why is toxicity of toilet spray even a talking point? Is this some form of blue-bowl washing? What are you thinking your customers are doing with this stuff? My client’s customers are spraying Turdcules® on toxic turds in toxic toilet bowls, not rubbing it on babies’ butts. I demand that you immediately cease any insinuations that Turdcules’ products are toxic; but more importantly, I encourage you for their reproductive abilities’ sakes to discourage your consumers from any notions that toilet spray is an adequate substitute for shea butter or champagne.

The full letter is available on the next page. In the meantime, to the final point made in the letter, remember that Turdcules may be a bathroom essential, but it is not a replacement for the toilet paper you haven’t been able to buy for the last month.

Earlier: The Most Epic Lawyer Response Ever To A Porn Star Threatening To Sue

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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.

The president says that he has total authority to reopen the country after we conquer COVID-19.

The governors disagree; they say that only governors can reopen the country, state by state.

The president retreats: He has total authority to “authorize” the governors to reopen as they like.

Which leaves me hiding over here in the weeds, asking: Don’t corporations get a say in this?

Some corporations don’t get much of a say: If you’re in the restaurant business, you need a waitstaff. Your dry cleaning business needs help on site.  Your janitorial business needs people in place.

Those businesses will probably reopen as soon as the government says it’s safe.

But other businesses, such as professional services firms, have veto power over the governors and the president: Law firms and accounting firms and management consulting firms and banks can do much of their business remotely. Those firms are under little pressure to require employees to commute to downtown offices, and those entities may well bide their time.

Most CEOs aren’t itching to sicken or kill their own employees. Most CEOs want to protect employee health and respect employees’ personal preferences in times as uncertain as these. The reopening of the economy may give those CEOs a lot of flexibility.

If your employees can do most of their work from home, how should you reopen your offices?

Whose personal presence in an office is essential? People who must be physically present in the office should be among the first to return to work.

Think about where your offices are located: Rural offices might reopen more quickly than those in densely populated urban areas.

Consider how people get to work: Folks who commute on mass transit might feel less comfortable returning to work than those who walk or drive to work.  (Should your company temporarily subsidize employees who want to avoid mass transit? How about subsidizing employees who are over 60 or who have compromised immune systems and want to avoid mass transit?)

What does the floor plan at your office look like? An open floor plan might not permit social distancing. A floor plan with individual offices might allow appropriate spacing.

How are the elevators and lobbies configured in your buildings? Will people be crowded together in public spaces?

Should people return to work slowly? Have only 25 percent of the workforce return to work in the beginning, or perhaps work alternating shifts on Monday/Wednesday/Friday or Tuesday/Thursday, to reduce the number of people in the office at any one time?

Should employees themselves get any say in the process? Should you permit people who are uncomfortable going to an office to work from home for longer?

The president and the governors can flap their lips, but corporations will have a big say in this.

I had one other thought about returning to work that makes me extremely uncomfortable: These are partisan times. The screaming heads on MSNBC and Fox despise each other. The commenters on websites loathe the “libtards” and the “Trumpkins,” depending on whose side you’re on. This is bad.

This also gives partisans funny rooting interests. Everyone wants the world to find a treatment for COVID-19. The president has repeatedly touted hydroxychloroquine as being an effective treatment. This has odd consequences. Republicans would prefer that hydroxychloroquine be the effective treatment (so Donald Trump can proclaim himself to be a hero) and Democrats want anything other than hydroxychloroquine to be effective (so the disease will be cured, but Trump will look like a fool).

Who ever thought that politics would cause people to cheer for different medicines?

Issues surrounding the reopening of the economy make this partisanship yet worse: Conservatives hope, I assume, that all portions of the country can open quickly and safely. If that happens, the economy might recover before November, and Trump might get re-elected.

Liberals are, I fear, hoping that Trump and the red-state governors miscalculate in their plan to reopen the country: If red states reopen quickly and COVID-19 resurges, then the economy (and Trump’s credibility) don’t fare nearly as well, and Biden is more likely to win the election.

Partisanship is unavoidable, I suppose, even if it’s petty and unappealing.

But we’re now talking about partisanship of a different sort: Partisanship that gives one half of the country a rooting interest in seeing the other half of the country suffer or die.

No intelligent person would really hold these views: No one wishes misery on others.

And I’m certainly not saying that Democrats are evil for wishing death on others, and Republicans are good because they’re wishing for health. I’m confident that if the partisan rooting interests were reversed, then Republicans would theoretically favor death and Democrats life.

But I sure don’t like a political dispute that encourages one half of our country to wish harm on the other half. That feels a bit too much like the Civil War for my taste.

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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.

Last week at the Rocket Aid virtual conference, someone addressed those of us on the media roundtable panel and said, “I’m tired of hearing about layoffs, is there any good news out there?” And the answer is… not much. But it’s not entirely nonexistent.

Over at Paul Weiss, the firm is tackling a number of projects related to the outbreak and placing themselves on the front lines of lawyerly efforts to bounce back. They served as an advisor and donated half-a-million dollars to NYC Healthcare Heroes, a program focused on getting food and supplies to more than 100,000 healthcare professionals throughout New York City.

The firm also set up a Coronavirus Relief Center to act as a clearinghouse for government and non-profit relief programs. It’s really a tremendous undertaking — scrolling through its pages provides a road map for anyone looking for help out there with instructions on how to apply and answers to frequently asked questions.

According to the firm, almost half of the firm’s legal staff are engaged in COVID-related pro bono work right now, exactly what socially responsible firms should be doing right now. There are no doubt other Biglaw pro bono efforts underway right now that deserve trumpeting. Even firms not currently engaged in public interest initiatives are eyeing opportunities to assist once the immediate crisis subsides and the work of picking up the pieces begins.

Keep us in the loop about these efforts. We can’t necessarily catalog them all, but we’ll do our best to let people know what your firm is doing and help other firms looking for something to do by providing a model to follow.

As the questioner from last week suggested, we should have a little good news these days.

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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.

He died yesterday morning at a private hospital in Harare after being unwell for a long time. He was 44 year old.

During his time at The Zimbabwean Gift was kidnapped by armed men and was only produced when the high court in Harare granted a writ of habeas corpus. When the authorities brought him to court, he could hardly walk as he had been tortured during his four-day ordeal.

Soon after leaving the Zimbabwean Phiri joined the Daily News as news editor.  At the time of his death he had been promoted to the position of assistant editor.

Editor and publisher of The Zimbabwean, Wilf Mbanga paid tribute to “a true professional who loved his job.”

“ As his editor, I could rely on him to produce an exclusive story that was well-researched and balanced. He perfected the art of asking the right questions when interviewing his subjects,” said Mbanga.
Gift will be sorely missed and our condolences go to his wife, family and friends.

Post published in: Featured

Argentina has a new plan for paying off its $70 billion in foreign debt, and that plan is to not pay it.

[Argentine Economy Minister Martin] Guzmán said the government’s offer to creditors calls for suspending interest payments from 2020 to 2022. Once debt payments resume in 2023, the government would pay an interest rate of 0.55%, which would gradually increase as the economy recovers, Mr. Guzmán said.

The minister said the plan would entail a 62% reduction on Argentina’s interest payments, saving the nation some $37.9 billion. The proposal also involves a 5.4% haircut on the capital of the foreign debt, or about $3.6 billion.

* Bill Cosby is the latest high-profile figure asking for early release from prison because of COVID-19. [Newser]

* A Louisiana attorney, who represented a pastor that defiantly held church services recently, has tested positive for COVID-19. [New York Post]

* A law firm is suing the Small Business Administration for allegedly discriminatory practices in how Payroll Protection Program funds were disbursed. [Capital Gazette]

* A woman is accused of using an ax to break into a Brooklyn courthouse over the weekend. Sounds pretty medieval. [New York Post]

* The New York Attorney General is taking steps to ensure that stimulus checks cannot be seized by debt collectors. [CBS News]

* A Brazilian appellate judge appeared shirtless last week during court proceedings held via Zoom. You see? Judges are just like everyone else. [Daily Mail]

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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.

As Zimbabwe turned 40 this weekend, I harked back to his soulful, disappointed, eyes on independence day, April 18,back in 1994, a few weeks after I had landed in Africa as a television journalist.

I will never forget Israel Mandere, who must be in his sixties now, yet clearly the internet – if ever it knew his name – has. I can still see him sweating in that field under the bright autumn sunshine as part of a struggling cooperative of war veterans scratching a living in the dust.

“No money, little food, tattered clothes,” says Mandere shaking his head in anger and stuttering with emotion.

“Ï am very embarrassed about that one.”

Two decades earlier, Mandere strapped an AK47 on his back to fight operations in eastern Zimbabwe from guerrilla camps, in the bush, across on the other side of the border in Mozambique as part of the ZANLA guerrilla forces that helped put President Mugabe in power. He joined, as a teenager and trained with thousands of comrades in Ethiopia to fight a small, yet tough, Rhodesian army bristling with modern weapons and vast firepower. The promise from his leaders – many of whom ended up in the cabinet – was a brighter tomorrow for the black majority.

In the early, euphoric, days this seemed so for many black Zimbabweans who found rights in a country where they had grown up feeling like foreigners. Black Zimbabweans took up top jobs in the land the commanding heights of the economy on a  secure bedrock of robust infrastructure. Investment and flowed in the wake of the first elections in and land with universal suffrage.. Politically Zimbabwe campaigned for change in Africa as part of the Non Aligned Movement in the former frontline states.

Yet the economy was mismanaged and struggled to increase the standard of living for the growing population. In the early 80s the government turned on its own people in Matabeleland and more than 20,000 people died – as a journalist, I saw some of the shallow graves with my own eyes. More than a decade on, it choked me that relatives knew where their loved ones were buried but were merely too afraid of authority to go and visit them.

I was so angry that the crew and I went to a church in Bulawayo to question one of the politicians who oversaw the killings, the late Enos Nkala, who has become a pastor.  Seriously, his people said the man himself was praying and couldn’t talk to us right now. We waited and Nkala slipped from the building and his accountability.  One of many examples I saw of how the people of  power in  Zimbabwe often had that air of impunity.

Then there was the ham fisted way productive farm land was taken over and often left in ruins. It is a shame that Mandere’s grandchildren can only hear stories about Zimbabwe being the bread basket of southern Africa. It is a bitter irony also that many children  and grandchildren of those who risked their lives fighting to free Zimbabwe were on the streets to howl President Mugabe out of power in November 2017.

I called one of my old friends and colleagues in Harare on independence day to see how it went. He admitted it hadn’t been a very celebratory 40^th birthday party with the economy down after 20 days of COVID-19 lockdown.

“Zimbabwe at 40?” says he,” It is like you have gone to school, grown up, got married, had children and then you wake up at 40 to find you are undernourished.”

Now, I worked in Zimbabwe, as a journalist, and for years I travelled to almost every corner, small town  and village to report stories and talk to people. I drank masese, danced in shebeens and met tens of thousands of Zimbabweans of all creeds and colours – good and bad,  For every bad person there were a hundred good.

“This one is free,” people used to say in the dance halls late at night when they were asked why I was there.

All I want is the best for Zimbabwe, but I fear how the country will be when it turns 50.

Post published in: Featured