Category: News Feeds

COVID-19 and the resulting social distancing and self-quarantining have caused health, child, and financial issues prompting  palpable anxiety, fear, and concern. It has also brought nuclear families closer, resulting in a multitude of activities to make time spent at home as active and as meaningful as possible, including online learning, movie marathons, and good old-fashioned board games. There are multitudes of online worships, including Continuing Legal Education courses, giving direction during these trying times, when personal contact is recommended and sometimes demanded.

The streets of my leafy suburb are lined with folded cardboard boxes and bags of trash. It would seem that in these strange times people have been “nesting,” the term used to describe cleaning and organizing before the birth of a child. Social distancing has resulted in overwhelming and unexpected hours at home. Closets not recently opened, basements rarely entered, and crawl spaces never explored have become mini travel destinations for those who find themselves getting to know every inch of the houses they work so hard to pay for and maintain, but never get to appreciate enough.

Given the medically based impetus for this current societal and  home-based lifestyle, what better time to deal with estate planning? As a trusts and estates practitioner, I often get phone calls around the new year when people make resolutions to get their affairs in order. Similarly, when tragedy strikes, such as the death of a celebrity (Kobe Bryant, for example) people realize the fragility of life. So too, as each day brings more closures and more quarantines, the need for estate planning becomes more real.

At a minimum every adult needs a last will and testament, power of attorney, and health care proxy. The last will and testament, drafted by an attorney, will direct the disposition of your assets and the guardianship of your children in the event you die. In the event you die without a last will and testament, the state intestate laws dictate the beneficiaries of your assets, and a judge will determine who gets custody of your minor children. A trustee may also be appointed under one’s will to manage the inheritance of a minor child.

A power of attorney authorizes an agent to stand in your place regarding financial matters in the event you are unable to act. Such activities include filing taxes, banking, purchasing and selling real estate, and filing for governmental benefits. A health care proxy is used when you are unable to make medical decisions for yourself. As such, it is imperative that  your wishes are known to your appointed agent in the event you cannot speak for yourself. Other concerns for estate planning include checking beneficiary designations, purchasing life insurance, and speaking with the elders in your family about their estate planning.

Many attorneys are now working from home and have the ability to “meet” with clients telephonically or via internet. For estate planning, this practice works very well. Zoom, Facetime, and conference calls are all good mechanisms for discussing matters pertaining to a last will, power of attorney, and health care proxy. In most states, however, the document signing must be in person before a notary and witnesses. Nonetheless there should be little impediment to doing the legwork for estate planning: discussing the documents, contemplating appointments, and finally drafting and reviewing. In these unique times when individuals may have more flexibility or, perhaps, time in terms of dealing with their own matters, perhaps we can move estate planning up a few pegs on life’s to-do list. Let us take advantage of these nesting times by not only physically cleaning and organizing our households, but mentally and legally preparing for our futures, in good health and safety.

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

Once again, the Russians out-trolled us, but this time they turned their sites on America’s judicial system. Yesterday the Justice Department moved to dismiss charges against “Putin’s Chef” Yevgeny Prigozhin, who funded a squad of Russian hackers that flooded social media with divisive, anti-Clinton propaganda during the 2016 election. Prigozhin, his company Concord Management, and the other named defendants had refused to submit to the court’s jurisdiction, while simultaneously abusing the discovery process to extract maximum information about US intelligence efforts.

Citing a “change in the balance of the government’s proof due to a classification determination,” the government claims that “further proceedings as to Concord, a Russian company with no presence in the United States and no exposure to meaningful punishment in the event of a conviction, promotes neither the interests of justice nor the nation’s security.”

They hacked our election, made a sham appearance in court, turned the case into a circus with the help of a BigLaw partner’s antics, and exploited discovery to learn about America’s intelligence gathering. As an added bonus, Americans are even more divided, with left-wingers wondering if this is yet another inappropriate, politically-motivated interference by Bill Barr to help Trump, while the right treats this as proof that Mueller was a “bent cop,” a case bolstered by the president’s constant twitter buffoonery.

You may remember this case from Reed Smith’s infamous filing citing Justice Otter from the infamous frat movie “Animal House,” saying, “The Special Counsel’s argument is reminiscent of Otter’s famous line, ‘Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f**ked up . . . you trusted us. Hey, make the best of it.’” As one does.

Or the time Eric “Bluto Blutarsky” Dubelier accused U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, of “bias on the part of the court here.” And when rebuffed, shot back “Your honor, that’s your opinion, I’ve been telling the truth.”

The government’s dismissal motion accused the defendants of abusing discovery to learn about US intelligence efforts, “some of which was leaked online, in violation of the Court’s protective order and, apparently, to discredit the investigation,” failing to comply with subpoenas, ignoring a Court order, and submitting a “misleading (at best) declaration from an incredible declarant, Yevgeniy Prigozhin,” but Dubelier got the last laugh when Judge Friedrich granted the motion last night.

“The government’s evidence was completely devoid of any information that could establish that the defendants knew what they were doing was in violation of highly complex U.S. laws and regulations,” Dubelier told the Washington Post. “This was a make-believe charge to fit the facts solely for political purposes.”

Well-played, Vlad!

U.S. v. Concord Management and Consulting, LLC [Dismiss Count(s), USA v. INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY LLC et al, No. 1:18-cr-00032-2 (D.D.C. Mar 16, 2020)]

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

This is one of the more awkward columns I’ve ever had to write. Above the Law is known for being irreverent and snarky, so a heartfelt post about a personal friend feels a little strange. But also strange is not acknowledging that a prominent figure in the legal world is currently hospitalized with the coronavirus. That’s right: David Lat, who founded Above the Law in 2006, has been diagnosed with the coronavirus.

Lat’s been very forthcoming in his personal interactions with the pandemic, posting about his diagnosis on social media.

As close watchers of ATL know, Lat stepped away from the day-to-day operations of the blog in 2019 and transitioned to a role as a legal recruiter at Lateral Link. However, he couldn’t really stay away and he writes a biweekly column for us. And we first got the inkling something was amiss yesterday when his biweekly column wasn’t ready. That’s when he shared he was waiting on the results of COVID-19 testing, which was eventually confirmed as positive.

Throughout his medical saga, Lat has lamented about how difficult it was to actually get the COVID-19 test. Without knowledge of direct exposure or international travel to hot zones, he had to jump through a series of hoops — a process he described on Facebook as “Kafkaesque.” We hope that, armed with an accurate diagnosis, he (and his husband, who also has the illness) can quickly make a full recovery.

And let’s hope he finds it less painful than his time at Wachtell. (Sorry, I had to do it.)

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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 of this writing, if we are to go back all the way to 1928, two out of the six worst days for the stock market have occurred in the past week. The epic fall is quite obviously attributable to the impact of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. However, even before the pandemic, our economy was already in rather obvious trouble. In order to understand why, however, we have to get into some necessary background into the extraordinarily complicated issue of our national debt.

Perhaps unsurprisingly to everyone reading this, the views regarding the impact of our national debt on the economy vary substantially. For some, the fact that our debt has increased greatly during the 21st century while inflation has continually dropped is proof positive that deficits don’t really matter, just government spending does. On the other side of the spectrum are the deficits hawks we all probably know who rant (always when it’s not their politician/side that’s in power), about how the debt will ruin us all and that a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget is necessary to prevent collapse. For what it is worth, I subscribe to the argument that the truth is rather absurdly complicated.

First of all, the deficit is a highly misleading economic measure given that it is calculated on the basis of cash flow, rather than economic accrual. Utilizing a cash flow measure creates, as Daniel Shaviro describes, “systematic, not just random, mismeasurement.” However misleading, taxpayers bear an undeniable economic burden of paying interest on the debt. If that burden becomes too high and tax revenues are no longer able to pay for government spending, absent dramatic fiscal policy changes, younger generations and future generations end up bearing a great burden for the reckless spending by older or previous generations. Which brings me to this presidency.

During this president’s three years in office, he has signed off on budgets that have added nearly 5 trillion to the debt. It might be a counterintuitive thing to say, but this increase in spending and debt could not have come at a worse time such as when the economy was doing well. As Eric Bohem illustrates in Reason, in the past, during periods of continual economic growth government deficits have traditionally fallen. The deficit decrease during periods of prosperity has allowed succeeding generations to better respond to an inevitable crisis. In our current reality however, the decrease we saw during the previous president’s second term has been replaced by the current president’s massive spending. Now, as we face the COVID-19 fallout, instead of approaching it on better fiscal footing, we start off already in a deep hole that is only expected grow enormously during this crisis.

This reality means not only will my generation and future generations have the burden of paying for the reckless spending of this administration, but we will have to couple that burden with paying for a crisis that as early as last week this president was claiming was a media/Democrat conspiracy. Moreover, the fact that such reckless spending levels during the past three years occurred during a period when revenue was at record levels — in part due to historic unilateral tax increases the president imposed on the consumer middle class exclusively — only adds insult to my generation’s injury.

Of course, the long-term forecast has always been one of doom and gloom. But stating that fact only furthers the argument that we should have been preparing for an inevitably turbulent future by controlling reckless spending whenever we can. And that it was destructive not to do so. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can expect any long-term planning as long as this president is in office.

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Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

As the practice of law continues to go increasingly digital, lawyers and their clients are constantly on the lookout for a better way to communicate and collaborate on everything from simple information sharing to complex projects and transactions.

HighQ is that better way. A recent addition to the Thomson Reuters family, HighQ offers law firms and businesses a powerful way to streamline their collaboration and improve the delivery of legal services. With the HighQ platform, both sides of an engagement are empowered to be more effective, efficient, innovative, and proactive. In a sea of technology options, HighQ is the platform you need when you want to work smarter in today’s demanding and competitive legal market.

The Power of HighQ

The folks behind HighQ started out with a mission that sounds simple enough: to transform the way law firms and corporate legal departments work and engage with their clients and colleagues. While the effort that went into creating HighQ might have been anything but simple, its developers succeeded in creating a sophisticated, user-friendly way to make collaboration and engagement a breeze, complete with efficient automation of legal processes and better management of complex projects and transactions.

HighQ works by offering a platform of many different capabilities that users can combine to solve their most pressing business problems. It offers seven core capabilities: document management, content management, task management, social collaboration, file sharing and syncing, smart forms and sheets, and a dashboard builder. Five additional capabilities – data visualization, document automation, enterprise knowledge management, AI, and workflow automation – can be added separately. All of these capabilities are built upon a foundation of security and compliance, auditing and reporting, and APIs and integrations, which extend throughout every aspect the HighQ platform.

You can think of each of these capabilities as the building blocks you use to customize your HighQ experience. Just pick and choose the functionalities you need to solve a specific problem or to handle a given project, then combine them in a template solution and hit deploy. All those capabilities are now packaged together for a given matter, and the template can be saved and redeployed for similar engagements in the future. The various building blocks can be combined and recombined in any number of ways to solve whatever problems might arise.

So, what can you do with HighQ? The answer is basically anything, but there are five overarching ways that law firms are using HighQ to engage with clients and improve business:

• Promoting the firm and attracting new clients
• Engaging current clients by adding value and insight
• Securely sharing content and communicating with external clients
• Delivering legal services and work product
• Working and collaborating internally on projects

HighQ also conveniently integrates with best-in-class solutions in a variety of areas, including document automation, AI, and document management, among others. With HighQ, you have the most advanced ecosystem of connectivity solutions available, meaning that it will quickly become your home base for all your legal work.

How it Works

When you first log in to your HighQ platform, you see a main dashboard for a particular engagement, which can be specifically branded with the name of that client.

On the left is a list of projects (called sites), which serves as a sort of virtual filing cabinet for the engagement. In the center is a feed of your recent activity. If this reminds you of a social media interface, you’re not wrong – the feed offers social collaboration capabilities, such as likes and comments. On the right are your files and tasks, so you can easily find the things you’re working and any tasks that have been assigned to you (whether by you or created by someone else).

When you click into a file, you see it in an online viewer where you can add annotations, make redactions, and view metadata. You can also internally share files or send them to external users. HighQ places a high priority on security, so you can always set permissions and limitations on who can access files, and how.

The tasks area offers a range of legal project management capabilities.

From here you can add tasks, review the details of current tasks, access documents related to a given task, change task priority simply by clicking and dragging, and much more.

Back on the main dashboard screen, when you access a particular matter (site), you get a new dashboard that you can customize with modules. This allows you to build and tailor a screen that shows you a range of data visualizations to better understand your project at glance.

You can also click into any given visualization to see an iSheet, which is essentially a combination database/spreadsheet that compiles all the information you need to track a matter.

There’s also a separate firmwide data dashboard that incorporates the social collaboration features of all users’ individual dashboard on a given matter and allows users to add items or visualizations for the whole firm to see.

Users with admin rights can access the project’s workflow engines and create rules for how the platform functions across a project, using if/then logic. There’s no coding or technical skill required – any user can easily manage how the platform functions, from how tasks trigger other actions to how iSheet edits cause documents to be created.

While you’re seeing all that, your clients see a different, more simplified dashboard, branded with your firm’s name.

Your clients have easy access to whatever content you want to share – essentially a one-stop-shop for your thought leadership and insights, where you can demonstrate your expertise. You can think of this as a way to commoditize the knowledge that previously just sat hidden in your files or in your head and make it available to your clients 24/7 in a useful environment that’s linked to what they’re working on.

Your clients can also communicate with you, feed you matter information and data, and submit legal service requests, as well as access work product and visualizations of the work being done on a project.

Simply put, there’s not much HighQ can’t do when it comes to collaboration between lawyers and clients, whether you’re at a law firm or a corporate legal department.

Try HighQ to solve your next big business problem, and you’ll soon find yourself using the platform to manage all your client engagements. HighQ currently works with approximately a million users at over 100,000 different organizations, including 75% of today’s Fortune 500 companies.

Lawyers are always looking for a better way to communicate and collaborate. HighQ is the answer. This is the only toolkit you need to solve even your most complex business problems and provide the best client service possible.

REQUEST A DEMO HERE

As the practice of law continues to go increasingly digital, lawyers and their clients are constantly on the lookout for a better way to communicate and collaborate on everything from simple information sharing to complex projects and transactions.

HighQ is that better way. A recent addition to the Thomson Reuters family, HighQ offers law firms and businesses a powerful way to streamline their collaboration and improve the delivery of legal services. With the HighQ platform, both sides of an engagement are empowered to be more effective, efficient, innovative, and proactive. In a sea of technology options, HighQ is the platform you need when you want to work smarter in today’s demanding and competitive legal market.

The Power of HighQ

The folks behind HighQ started out with a mission that sounds simple enough: to transform the way law firms and corporate legal departments work and engage with their clients and colleagues. While the effort that went into creating HighQ might have been anything but simple, its developers succeeded in creating a sophisticated, user-friendly way to make collaboration and engagement a breeze, complete with efficient automation of legal processes and better management of complex projects and transactions.

HighQ works by offering a platform of many different capabilities that users can combine to solve their most pressing business problems. It offers seven core capabilities: document management, content management, task management, social collaboration, file sharing and syncing, smart forms and sheets, and a dashboard builder. Five additional capabilities – data visualization, document automation, enterprise knowledge management, AI, and workflow automation – can be added separately. All of these capabilities are built upon a foundation of security and compliance, auditing and reporting, and APIs and integrations, which extend throughout every aspect the HighQ platform.

You can think of each of these capabilities as the building blocks you use to customize your HighQ experience. Just pick and choose the functionalities you need to solve a specific problem or to handle a given project, then combine them in a template solution and hit deploy. All those capabilities are now packaged together for a given matter, and the template can be saved and redeployed for similar engagements in the future. The various building blocks can be combined and recombined in any number of ways to solve whatever problems might arise.

So, what can you do with HighQ? The answer is basically anything, but there are five overarching ways that law firms are using HighQ to engage with clients and improve business:

• Promoting the firm and attracting new clients
• Engaging current clients by adding value and insight
• Securely sharing content and communicating with external clients
• Delivering legal services and work product
• Working and collaborating internally on projects

HighQ also conveniently integrates with best-in-class solutions in a variety of areas, including document automation, AI, and document management, among others. With HighQ, you have the most advanced ecosystem of connectivity solutions available, meaning that it will quickly become your home base for all your legal work.

How it Works

When you first log in to your HighQ platform, you see a main dashboard for a particular engagement, which can be specifically branded with the name of that client.

On the left is a list of projects (called sites), which serves as a sort of virtual filing cabinet for the engagement. In the center is a feed of your recent activity. If this reminds you of a social media interface, you’re not wrong – the feed offers social collaboration capabilities, such as likes and comments. On the right are your files and tasks, so you can easily find the things you’re working and any tasks that have been assigned to you (whether by you or created by someone else).

When you click into a file, you see it in an online viewer where you can add annotations, make redactions, and view metadata. You can also internally share files or send them to external users. HighQ places a high priority on security, so you can always set permissions and limitations on who can access files, and how.

The tasks area offers a range of legal project management capabilities.

From here you can add tasks, review the details of current tasks, access documents related to a given task, change task priority simply by clicking and dragging, and much more.

Back on the main dashboard screen, when you access a particular matter (site), you get a new dashboard that you can customize with modules. This allows you to build and tailor a screen that shows you a range of data visualizations to better understand your project at glance.

You can also click into any given visualization to see an iSheet, which is essentially a combination database/spreadsheet that compiles all the information you need to track a matter.

There’s also a separate firmwide data dashboard that incorporates the social collaboration features of all users’ individual dashboard on a given matter and allows users to add items or visualizations for the whole firm to see.

Users with admin rights can access the project’s workflow engines and create rules for how the platform functions across a project, using if/then logic. There’s no coding or technical skill required – any user can easily manage how the platform functions, from how tasks trigger other actions to how iSheet edits cause documents to be created.

While you’re seeing all that, your clients see a different, more simplified dashboard, branded with your firm’s name.

Your clients have easy access to whatever content you want to share – essentially a one-stop-shop for your thought leadership and insights, where you can demonstrate your expertise. You can think of this as a way to commoditize the knowledge that previously just sat hidden in your files or in your head and make it available to your clients 24/7 in a useful environment that’s linked to what they’re working on.

Your clients can also communicate with you, feed you matter information and data, and submit legal service requests, as well as access work product and visualizations of the work being done on a project.

Simply put, there’s not much HighQ can’t do when it comes to collaboration between lawyers and clients, whether you’re at a law firm or a corporate legal department.

Try HighQ to solve your next big business problem, and you’ll soon find yourself using the platform to manage all your client engagements. HighQ currently works with approximately a million users at over 100,000 different organizations, including 75% of today’s Fortune 500 companies.

Lawyers are always looking for a better way to communicate and collaborate. HighQ is the answer. This is the only toolkit you need to solve even your most complex business problems and provide the best client service possible.

REQUEST A DEMO HERE

Ed. note: Please welcome Molly McDonough to the pages of Above the Law. Her writing will focus on client communications.

Everyone is paying attention to the coronavirus right now, except maybe Chicago St. Patrick’s Day revelers who thought it would be OK to pub crawl over the weekend.

Those partiers didn’t get the social-distancing message. But millions of others did. And they’re scared. They need reassurance and guidance, especially for situations that are already out of their control.

Think child custody, divorce, criminal defense, wills and trusts, guardianship, powers of attorney, advanced directives, contracts (many of which are in a state of disruption). The list goes on and on.

Companies I do business with are flooding me with notes about COVID-19. For the most part, these communications have been less than helpful. They read as self-serving and often rehash the same CDC information I’ve read a million times.

That’s not to say there aren’t some good client messages and connections happening.

Take Bay Area family lawyer Erin Levine, founder of Hello Divorce. After getting more than 50 questions about how the pandemic could impact divorce proceedings, she produced a helpful Q&A for her clients and, undoubtedly, many others looking for guidance.

In her piece, “Will Coronavirus Affect My Divorce?” Levine covers court dates and possible closings, co-parenting decisions, and child support if jobs are at risk. Levine’s team has since fielded more than 500 questions from the Hello Divorce form at the end of the blog post, her firm’s contact form, and via Instagram.

Utah lawyer Rebecca Long Okura also urged her clients and potential clients to prepare COVID-19 co-parenting plans sooner rather than later. She created a realistic hypothetical case profile to discuss the issues and then jumped into the comments to address specific questions and situations.

Long Okura sent the link to clients and has been working with them directly to address the co-parenting issues she raised.

I like these examples because they aren’t vague, cover-your-bases messages. They are specific to these practice areas and create opportunities for meaningful client connections.

Seattle lawyer Dan Harris is capturing his firm’s client worries and common questions at his China Law Blog. Given his firm practices at the epicenter of outbreaks in China and the United States, Harris has much to say on the topic. In his first of what I expect will be many blog posts, he summarizes questions in several key practice areas. Each of the topics in his overview would be good fodder for a personalized Q&A for lawyers reaching out to clients.

But even if you don’t have time to write a Q&A for your clients, you need to make a connection. Reach out. Let your clients know how to reach you and how you’ll stay connected to their current matters or if they need you for something else. No doubt, you would let clients know if matters get postponed. But even if they aren’t, your clients will be wondering.

The lawyers who are blogging, posting meaningful updates, and actively reaching out to their clients show they are knowledgeable and care about their clients. They also show they recognize their clients’ fears and are working on ways to provide answers at a time when sometimes the answer is, we’ll have to wait and see.

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Molly McDonough is a longtime legal affairs writer and editor. Before launching McDonough Media, she was editor and publisher of the ABA’s flagship magazine, the ABA Journal. She writes about access to justice at A Just Society.

Fighting isolation and loneliness amid a broad public health concern might seem more challenging, but the best way to do it is generally the same as in the absence of an outbreak: with intention and commitment. Schedule time to check in (by phone or video) with family and friends and keep the appointment. Even if you’re tired, make the calls and give yourself permission to be fully present for the conversations. In a time of increased stress, a sense of connection can be transformative and, for some, lifesaving.

—  Patrick Krill, an attorney who is a certified alcohol and drug counselor and works as a consultant to numerous law firms on mental health and substance abuse issues, in an op-ed about how lawyers and legal professionals can protect their mental health during the coronavirus outbreak that’s plagued the world.

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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.

When we started hearing that the Trump administration sowed the seeds for the lackluster response to this outbreak by firing the nation’s whole pandemic preparedness team a few years ago, it was genuinely disturbing how unsurprising it was.

But former administration officials are now pushing back against the report that Trump recklessly fired the response team of experts by claiming… he didn’t dissolve the team at all. An odd flex given that Donald Trump already admitted that he fired everyone in the office, explaining that he didn’t want people on the payroll when there wasn’t an active threat and “when we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”

And while being comically contradicted by Trump himself should end the inquiry, the managerial lackeys who actually staked their careers on this debacle are taking to the press to try and defend their crumbling professional reputations.

Tim Morrison, a former NSC official, wrote to the Washington Post claiming, “No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there.” It’s an editorial earning a lot of plaudits from John Bolton, Morrison’s former boss. who is also deeply implicated in this move since he oversaw the decision. Right-wing Twitter is sending it around in… I don’t know… some kind of weird attempt to claim that whatever Trump did with the team isn’t why the response has been so badly botched?

It’s also an editorial that seems to woefully misunderstand both “pandemics” and “preparedness.”

Morrison’s claim is that he ran the successor organization to the pandemic preparedness group, a move that cut most of the minds behind the original, but…

One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.

This is where we can all take a lesson from Ford v. Ferrari.

When you take a highly specialized racing unit and say, “we’re making changes, firing your people, and putting you under the domestic sedan unit,” well, you end up losing Le Mans.

Morrison and Bolton are publicly arguing that they aren’t responsible for dismantling a highly praised pandemic team because they buried its mission under the auspices of an arms control and bioterror unit. Except those are security threats predicated upon predicting and remediating human state and non-state actors. Where, exactly, does a group born out of influenza responses fit? Because when your leadership is a bioterrorism hammer, everything becomes a nail. This is how you end up with 800 scenarios for a nerve gas attack on public transit and 0 scenarios for dealing with an asymptomatic pneumoniatic flu.

Like the revolving door corporate hacks that they are, the administration made its cuts about “efficiency” rather than “results” and somehow has the gall to pretend they were right when the whole operation crashes around them. Diseases might come from bioterrorism, but they’re far more likely to come from the serendipity of mutation. If some entity were planning a bioterror attack, it would focus on agents that are highly lethal and, necessarily, not highly contagious — diseases can’t survive when they kill the host. This is precisely why an organization charged with gameplanning terrorist attacks is ill-suited to deal with traditional pandemics. The whole frame of reference is wrong.

Dissolving the team would have been bad, but what the administration actually did was far worse. What they actually did was slit the throat of America’s preparedness for an outbreak like this while convincing themselves they still had a plan. Senior administration officials honestly believed they had this covered by their cut-rate bioterror team. The whole operation revolves around the idea that there’s someone to attack, someone to blame, someone to fire. But there’s no villain here and they can’t seem to grasp what to do about that.

If only they had some sort of “team” charged with “preparing” for something like this…

No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there. [Washington Post]
Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised [AP]

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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.

Terror is a feeling we’re all getting used to keeping at bay. The novel virus COVID-19 seems to be coming for us all, indiscriminately afflicting friends and celebrities with equal ease. And even for those privileged enough to assume they can survive the health impacts, the economic downturn is looming, the first harbinger of which are the slew of restaurant workers that have just been laid off. It’s enough to make anyone want to bury their head in the sand until the whole mess blows over.

That (albeit, understandable) approach is pretty much the opposite of what Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp did as the impacts of COVID-19 started to cascade. He’s decided to harness the awesome power of Biglaw to help those who are facing daunting economic realities. As officials on the federal, state and local levels are working to ameliorate those impacts, Karp is organizing pro bono efforts at Paul Weiss to help folks navigate those complicated waters. As he told Law.com:

“As these programs are rolling out, I believe we’re going to be able to help these individuals access emergency resources that would otherwise be unavailable,” he said.

On Saturday afternoon, he sent a firmwide email looking for volunteers to build a “swat team” to make sense of these resources. Within two hours, over 350 attorneys at the firm had responded by pledging their assistance. Another 25 to 50 have volunteered since the start of the day Monday.

“I’ve been chair of this firm for 13 years,” Karp said. “There’s nothing I’ve seen that compares to this.”

Those lawyers are already at work. They’re researching federal programs, New York state programs, New York City programs, other state programs, and private and charitable organization programs. They’re drafting FAQs, templates and other forms. And they’ll be staffing a 24/7 hotline to answer questions about all the programs.

Karp anticipates the firm will spend 2,500 hours a day on the effort, but he doesn’t think that’ll be enough. He’s calling on other firms to join in the effort so that the full power of Biglaw can be thrown at the problem:

“I think in the U.S. we’re going to need thousands of lawyers to step up and work with us on this,” he said.

Hopefully Biglaw heeds the call.

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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).