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If you’re a lawyer practicing in a state that has instituted a “shelter in place” mandate, your comfortable daily routine has most likely been rudely disrupted. Those of you who are introverts are probably thrilled with this sudden turn of events, but if you’re an extrovert, well, my thoughts go out to you.

Regardless of your personality type, due to the pervasiveness and contagiousness of COVID-19 you’ve no doubt developed an unexpected and resounding sense of empathy for Howie Mandel, which by chance coincided with a sudden onset of mysophobia. As a result, you may have found yourself seeking to avoid face-to-face contact with your germ-ridden fellow humans by reluctantly resorting to videoconferencing via Zoom, a platform that is suddenly all the rage in today’s pandemic-ridden world.

It wasn’t always this way. Like most lawyers, prior to March 1, you most likely associated the word “zoom” with a strange little kid in a commercial who was obsessed with Mazdas, of all things. But now you’re a videoconferencing fool.

Despite having no idea what you’re doing, you’re giving it the old college try and are bumbling along. Hopefully you’ve managed to avoid using the facilities while your webcam was on and have likewise taken Bob Ambrogi’s Zoom etiquette tips to heart.

If so, then you’re well on your way to Zooming like a pro. But to truly advance to videoconferencing mastery, you need take it to the next level.

Ready to kick it up a notch? If so, here are a few of my favorite Zoom tips and tricks.

Bling Up Your Background

Haven’t you always wanted to be one of the cool kids? Well with a blinged-up Zoom background, that wish can become reality. With this setting, you can change your background to display any image you choose, whether it’s the bridge of the Enterprise, the Simpsons’ living room, the rolling waves on a beach, or a beautiful city skyline.

Changing your background is easy. First you’ll need to download images to your computer. You can search Google for desktop wallpaper or Zoom background images and then save your chosen pictures to your computer. You can also search for video background images as well.

Then, once a meeting has started, click on the up arrow located next to “Stop Video” in the left corner of the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Then click on “Choose Virtual Background” from the pop-up menu. Lastly, click on the plus sign (+) located in the middle of the “Settings” screen on the right side and upload your chosen images from your computer. Choose the image you’d like as your background and voilá! You’re officially the coolest kid on the block!

Be Your Best Self

If you’re like most people, you’re not exactly dressed for the office when working from home. That’s where Zoom’s fabulous “Touch Up My Appearance” setting comes in. It provides a soft focus à la Cybill Shepherd on Moonlighting.

To activate this feature, once a meeting has started, click on that same up arrow located next to “Stop Video” (as mentioned above) and choose “Video Settings” from the menu. Then check the “Touch Up My Appearance” option located under the “My Video” section. That’s  all there is to it! Now your best self will be on display for all to see.

Unmute With Ease

First and foremost, always mute yourself if you’re not talking. It’s just basic videoconferencing etiquette. Then, once you’ve done so, you can always unmute yourself by clicking on the mute button.

But if you’d like to make a quick comment or someone asks you to briefly provide input, another option available is that you can simply hold the space bar down to unmute yourself while you speak and then release the space bar when you’re done. After releasing it, you’ll be muted once again.

Abandon Snark, All Ye Who Enter Here

If your Zoom meeting host has enabled private chats, you may want to treat the private chat just as you would emails or text messages. In other words, as the saying goes, dance like no one’s watching, but Zoom chat in private as if it will someday be read in a deposition.

This is because you often have the ability choose to save chats that occurred during a meeting to your computer’s local drive. When you do this, all public chats and any of your private chats are saved in a chat log. The same goes for anyone else who chooses to save the chat: they can save public chats and private chats they were involved in. This means that private chats don’t necessarily disappear once a meeting is over, since whomever you were chatting with could save the private chat and later share it with others. So to be on the safe side, ensure that your private chats are snark-free.

Be A Control Freak

Last, but not least, familiarize yourself with the settings that allow you to control meetings and participants. By doing so, you’ll save yourself a lot of hassles down the road.

When scheduling a meeting, you can choose whether to require a password for the meeting and also restrict access to only users who have signed in. Under “advanced settings” you can choose to “mute participants on entry,” which can sometimes come in handy depending on the personalities of those attending.

You can also manage participants during the meeting. To do this, click on “Manage Participants” in the middle of the toolbar on the bottom of the screen. This will open up a sidebar on the right where you have the option to choose to mute all participants. Then under “More” you can choose to lock the meeting to prevent new participants from joining, and can also choose whether to allow participants to unmute themselves or rename themselves.

Those are just a few ways to up your Zoom game in the days to come. Just think, a few weeks ago you’d have scoffed at the idea of a video conference, and here you are, nearly a Zoom master. The times they sure are a-changin’.

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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.

American law firms seem to be in a full panic thanks to the arrival of the novel coronavirus pandemic that’s been sweeping the globe. From salary cuts to furloughs to layoffs, these firms have done just about everything as far as cost-saving measures are concerned to maintain their financial health — well, almost everything.

Summer associate season is just around the corner, and while some firms have deferred start dates and others have embraced the possibility of remote work, others still have been dragging their feet, waiting for some guidance before deciding to make a move that could impact the rest of their student employees’ lives.

As Zeughauser Group legal consultant Kent Zimmermann has mused regarding this year’s summer programs, “[s]ome [firms] have canceled, made [an] internal announcement, but have not yet publicly announced the decision.” Today, we’ll be publicly announcing one law firm’s decision for them.

FordHarrison, one of the nation’s largest labor and employment law firms, contacted students earlier this week to let them know that its summer program would not be taking place. Here’s an excerpt from the letter students received:

We have made the difficult decision to cancel our 2020 summer associate program as a result of the uncertainty and challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since March 16, many FordHarrison offices have been operating remotely and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Relationship building and face-to-face interaction between lawyers and summer associates are essential to our recruiting process and the opportunity we committed to provide to you. Client demand for our services remains high, but it is very difficult to anticipate what the coming months may bring even when the on-site work resumes. Given this level of uncertainty, we determined we will not have the appropriate learning opportunities available to provide a meaningful summer associate experience.

We reached out to FordHarrison for comment, but have not yet received word back. We will update this article with any responses we receive.

While we understand where the firm is coming from, this really puts the law students who expected to spend the summer working at FordHarrison — in any form, remotely or in person — in a horrible position. Not only will they be jobless, but the financial insecurity the firm’s would-be employees will be facing during a public health crisis is beyond the pale. “It hurts to know that summer associates matter so little,” said one of the law students affected by FordHarrison’s decision. “I hope I’ll be able to find something before May (or, at the very least, I hope I can even pay rent).”

Best of luck to all of the law students who were affected by FordHarrison’s decision to suspend it summer associate program due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Flip to the next page to see the full letter from FordHarrison.)

What is your firm planning to do with its summer associate program amid coronavirus concerns? Please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “Coronavirus Summer Associate Program”) and let us know. Stay safe.

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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.

Sad news from the front lines of the coronavirus. Retired Southern District of New York Judge Kevin Duffy passed away from COVID-19 yesterday. He was 87 years old.

Duffy, who served in S.D.N.Y. for 44 years, retired from the bench in 2016 and worked with his son, Kevin Duffy, Jr,. at the Greenwich, Connecticut, firm of Duffy & Staab. The former assistant U.S. attorney and the administrator of the New York regional office of the Securities and Exchange Commission was nominated to the federal bench in 1972 by President Richard Nixon.

At S.D.N.Y., Duffy oversaw a number of prominent trials. In the 1980s, he presided over a trial of several members of the Gambino organized crime family, as well as the federal trial of the infamous Brink’s armed car robbery. He was also the judge assigned the two trials related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

One of his S.D.N.Y. colleagues, Judge P. Kevin Castel, told the New York Law Journal this about Duffy:

“He’s had some of the most important trials there are,” Castel said. “Yet despite all of this, in 44 years of service to the court, many of us know that at the heart of his greatness were small acts of care and concern for others, particularly at times when they were experiencing a bad period in their life. … John Sprizzo, who was a judge of this court, once said to me that with friends like Kevin Duffy, you don’t need many friends.”

Shawn Regan, a former Duffy clerk and now a partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth, had similarly wonderful things to say about the judge:

“On the occasion of his 40th anniversary on the bench, he revealed to an audience the central element of his legendarily brutal law clerk interview process,” Regan said in an email. “He said: ‘It was quite simple, really. I was looking for people who I could have as my friends for the rest of my life.’”

And his son remembered him as “as good as [fathers] get,” saying, “He, quite frankly, was one of my best friends, if not my best friend.”

Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, and colleagues during this difficult time.

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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).

Last year, Coatue Management co-founder Thomas Laffont bought himself a little Southern California beach getaway: Two houses, each with a two-car garage, on an acre-and-a-quarter in one of Malibu’s most exclusive neighborhoods. That certainly seems like quite a lot of space, at least to this apartment-dweller, but these are difficult times. California has some of the strictest, most long-standing and apparently successful shelter-in-place orders in the country, and the Laffonts must have felt increasingly cramped in our coronavirus-stricken world. Luckily, they are billionaires, and their neighbor from across the street, Julia Roberts, was more than happy to listen to the Laffonts’ offer for the house next door to theirs, which the actress just happened to own. Now, she has $8 million she doesn’t really need, and the Laffonts have an extra acre-plus in which to keep their distance from each other, as well as another four bedrooms and three bathrooms in which to hide from the germs.

Zimbabwe’s spiral into economic chaos and uncertainty over the last decade has left the country with few functioning industries and an over-reliance on imports of nearly everything from food and furniture to building materials and even toothpicks.

The economic upheaval and notorious hyperinflation has decimated much of the country’s manufacturing base which in previous decades had been supported by its higher learning institutions.

Now that the country has been put on a 21-day lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus after reporting eight Covid-19 cases and one death, the country has had to look within as it can’t compete on the global open market for imported gloves, masks and hand sanitizers given the huge demand.

There is additional pressure because hundreds of doctors and nurses in Zimbabwe have refused to work until they are guaranteed by health authorities there will be enough personal protective equipment for their usage. The Zimbabwe Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association has been asking for adequate equipment outlined in the World Health Organization’s guidelines including masks, eyewear and gowns.

The government has turned to its tertiary institutions with engineering and technology capacity including University of Zimbabwe, Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT), Great Zimbabwe University (GZU), Midlands State University and the Harare Institute of Technology, among others, for production to meet local demand.

These universities are located in various provinces around the country and they are supplying hand sanitizers, masks, gloves and other personal protective clothing to clinics, hospitals and security personnel in those provinces.

Higher education minister professor Amon Murwira told Quartz Africa the hand sanitizers, masks and gloves were made to meet the standards of the WHO and the Standards Association of Zimbabwe. “Universities are all where it starts. (Our) sanitizers are made to meet standards,” he said.

“We are supplying health-related institutions (such as) hospitals and clinics through the Health ministry. We are also targeting government institutions (including) police and other public interface institutions to combat the spread of the virus,” says Dr Clinton Musekiwa, marketing director at CUT.  He says the university is producing more than 2 000 masks per day and already supplied around 5,000 masks to several health institution with more orders from public health facilities and big businesses.

GZU, which is also manufacturing masks, has procured glycerol and hydro peroxide and ethanol from Tongaat Hullet-Zimbabwe’s largest sugar producer-to manufacture hand sanitizers.

Post published in: Featured

Where bread is retailing at Z$40, up from Z$30 the previous day; where there hasn’t been water for months and there’s sporadic access to borehole water; where neighbourhoods have no power and must queue for gas; there is growing desperation and precious little hope of observing physical distancing, says Crecey Kuyedzwa, Fin24’s correspondent in Zimbabwe.

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Like many countries across the globe, Zimbabwe started its 21-day total lockdown on Monday 30 March 2020.

The lockdown is meant to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which is wreaking havoc across the world. Lives have been lost and economies are crumbling.

Before the lockdown, Zimbabwe had seven confirmed cases of Covid-19, including one fatality, but authorities felt it prudent to declare the country was on lockdown.

With Zimbabwe critically short of testing kits, ventilators, personal protective equipment and medical drugs, its biggest weapon to fight Covid-19 was to encourage social distancing.

“I want all of you to act as if you already have the virus,” President Emmerson Mnangagwa said in his address to the nation on Monday evening.

He said the lockdown was an opportunity to save lives “by staying at home. By washing your hands and by keeping at least two metres’ distance from one another.”

Companies were asked to close, except those that were considered essential.

Private passenger transporters were also ordered off the roads, with the state-owned Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO) being the only one allowed to continue operating.

Most informal markets and businesses, which market watchers say largely drive Zimbabwe’s economy, were also asked to close.

The luxury of distancing

While all this was done in order to maximise the impact of social distancing, it has only managed to stop people from engaging in their various economic activities both in the suburbs and in the Harare CBD, where streets are now empty.

Law enforcement officers are not as visible as we expected, and on the few occasions they are seen, they are packed in a lorry, more than 50 in a 35-tonne truck, with no face masks. A bad example for practising social distancing – or physical distancing, as some prefer to call it.

Physical distancing has also proved to be a luxury for those in low-income, high-density suburbs.

On day two, people were still moving freely, only avoiding the main roads. At the local grocery shopping area in Glen View 1, 20km south west of Harare CBD, small groups of men were sitting enjoying their beer, sharing opaque beer even, oblivious of what this might do to their health if one of them were positive for the virus.

No power, a hunt for gas

On Saturday, after hearing that that a 21-day lockdown lay ahead, I set out to buy gas, as we were left with four days’ worth of supplies.

My neighbourhood and many others have not been connected to the power grid, 10 years after establishment.

The power utility, ZESA, does not have the required resources like cables and transformers, and – to a large extent – power itself.

Under normal circumstances, however, this would still only take me a couple of minutes, but on this day the queue for gas tanks was snaked for metres upon metres, and I had to spend six hours waiting for gas. Social distancing was a luxury.

Only one lady had a face mask. I had with me a small bottle of sanitiser, which I would apply every time we took turns to move the gas tanks, but as the day progressed, I abandoned its use. It was just not convenient at the time.

There’s toilet paper, but no one can afford it

Although we had stocked up on food the previous week, there were a few items we still needed. While government had assured the nation that grocery retailers would be open during the lockdown, one can never be 100% sure.

So on Sunday, we set out to get some food items, only to be greeted by an unpleasantly long queue. Again, physical distancing was a vain hope. While the outlet was letting in a few people at a time, outside customers were not leaving even a centimetre between them, as they pushed and shoved.

Inside the shop, it was evident supplies were running low. Some shelves were empty. We failed to get some basic necessities. Other products saw price hikes.

As for tissues and toilet paper? Unlike in other countries, it’s a product that is abundant in Zimbabwe. Hyperinflation has pushed the price toilet paper beyond the reach of many. Bread was now retailing at Z$40 up from Z$30 the previous day. But people still queued without keeping any distance.

It was the same today as I went out in preparation to write this article.

Desperation trumps distancing

People still queued to get some cooking gas. For two days, several neighbourhoods have not had power, forcing people to look for gas as an alternative, but it is also not readily available.

By 08:00hrs on Tuesday, the gas queue at one of the outlets was long and winding, with the place yet to open.

Another queue, as long as 50 metres, had also formed at grocery retail outlet that was yet to open.

Word was that subsidised maize meal had been delivered the previous night. With prices of basic products increasing by the day, as reflected by inflation for February 2020 at 540.16%, government is providing subsidised maize meal at Z$70.

However, supplies can’t meet the growing demand.

As a result, physical distancing was practically impossible. People shoved and jostled to keep their position in the queue. Some shouted at each other, risking drops of saliva.

Of the hundreds in the queue, not even one had a face mask.

As I drove back home, I passed through a community borehole, where a line was slowly forming. The neighbourhood has not had water for months and every day, residents come out to fetch water, and help each other pump it up. There is no sight of face masks or handy sanitisers, not in the ghetto.

The lockdown has only managed to stop economic activities, but social gatherings are inevitable.

Only hope and prayer can save Zimbabwe from Covid-19.

Post published in: Featured

Harare (AFP) – Buckets and jerrycans in hand or in wheelbarrows, dozens of Zimbabweans stand close to each other in a long queue, patiently waiting at a borehole in Harare’s middle-class Mabelreign suburb to collect water.

While this is a daily sight, this week things are different.

The water-short southern African country is starting to enforce a 21-day lockdown to try contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

People are supposed to be observing social distancing, stay indoors and above all, wash their hands regularly. But these instructions will not be easy to follow.

“Of course I have heard about social distancing,” said 16-year-old Maxel Chikova.

“But people were already queued up like this when I joined the line, so I just hope nobody has the virus.”

In the same queue is another teen, Winnet Mgaramombe, who is not in school because of the virus restrictions.

“We have heard about the coronavirus but we need water for domestic use, so corona or no corona we shall come to get water,” she said, carrying a yellow bucket.

The scene is played out all over greater Harare.

City authorities have struggled to constantly supply water to the capital city of 4.5 million residents for many years.

Across town in Mbare, the largest high density township, the queue is even longer.

– Unsafe drinking water –

There are many people milling around.

Housewife Epiphania Moyo had been in the queue for a good part of the morning and is well aware of the need for better hygiene to halt the spread of the virus.

“Of course, we have heard about coronavirus, and we try as much as we can to wash our hands, but sometimes we would rather put it to other domestic uses.”

Hand sanitisers are a luxury she cannot afford.

“That’s for the rich, not for us who live in the ghetto.”

Coronavirus has brought Harare’s perennial water woes under the spotlight.

Some parts of the city have gone for almost two decades without running water.

The well-to-do have drilled boreholes in their properties while the enterprising make money vending and delivering water in mobile tankers to those who can afford it.

For the majority, public boreholes are the only option.

On rare days, water trickles out of taps, but it is of questionable quality and is at times smelly.

When run in a bathtub or a basin, within minutes, brown gooey sediment settles to the bottom.

A 2019 recent study by South Africa-based Nanotech Water Solutions found that Harare’s water contains toxins that can cause diseases of the liver and affect the central nervous system.

While the underground water from boreholes is widely believed to be safe to drink, a 2018 cholera outbreak which killed nearly 50, was traced to a borehole in a Kuwadzana township.

An underground sewer pipe had contaminated the water.

Around 4,000 people died and at least 100,000 people fell ill in another cholera outbreak in 2008.

Harare City Council cites a shortage of money to purify the water.

It says the water purifying plants, built during British colonial rule, are woefully inadequate to supply the city’s burgeoning population.

The water distribution pipes date back to more than five 50 years ago, and half of the purified water is estimated to be lost through pipes bursting.

The government has been silent on how it will provide water to those whose taps have been dry for years or those whose supply is sporadic.

* Even though RBG has continued to hit the Supreme Court gym during the COVID-19 pandemic, Justice Breyer has been cooped up at his home cooking pot roasts, having video nights with his grandkids, and going on an occasional jog while maintaining social distance. [Wall Street Journal]

* A Texas pastor has filed a lawsuit seeking to hold religious services despite shelter-in-place orders related to COVID-19. [Daily Mail]

* Austrian authorities are facing a class-action lawsuit over their handling of a massive COVID-19 outbreak at a popular ski resort. Avoiding COVID-19 can be my latest excuse to avoid hitting the slopes… [CNN]

* A federal judge has publicly reprimanded a lawyer for threatening opposing counsel and falsely claiming that anti-semitic insults were made against him. [Reuters]

* Despite earlier efforts to stay open, Hobby Lobby stores in certain locations will be closed amid shelter-in-place orders enacted because of COVID-19. [CBS News]

* Law enforcement is warning that anyone who attempts to avoid an arrest or citation by faking COVID-19 symptoms could face serious consequences. We’ve all tried to get out of a ticket at some point, but this is really low. [ABC News]

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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 another hour goes by, another Biglaw firm announces that it’s taking cost-cutting measures to alleviate the pressures that have been foisted upon it by the worldwide coronavirus outbreak. From layoffs to furloughs to salary cuts, we’ve seen it all as COVID-19 continues its devastation of the legal profession.

Sources say the latest firm to announce salary cuts is Arent Fox, which has reportedly reduced salaries for counsel by 30 percent and associates by 25 percent. These are the largest pay cuts we’ve seen yet. This information was given to employees by phone, so no memo exists. We’re told that equity partners will be taking reduced distributions, but percentages were not disclosed. One unhappy associate noted that while the calls about the salary cuts stressed the importance of everyone at the firm being in this together, “associates and counsel seem to be a little more in this than others.”

We reached out to Arent Fox for confirmation of the salary cuts, and a spokesperson said these measures were taken in order to put the firm in a “strong position”:

As a result of the economic disruption caused by COVID-19, Arent Fox has made temporary adjustments to its business operations. We recognize the biggest mistake we can make is to underestimate the scope of this pandemic. In response to the economic slowdown, the firm is instituting a temporary pay cut for all attorneys, professionals, and staff.

The range of legal issues, regulatory challenges, and policy changes unfolding during this crisis are historic. Our goal is to put Arent Fox in a strong position so that we can continue to provide critical, first-rate service to our clients as we help them navigate these challenges.

We hope this means the firm is able to avoid layoffs or furloughs if this pandemic goes on for longer than expected.

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

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

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.