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Trying to chart out the course of your life is particularly challenging during a pandemic. The lack of certainty about, well, pretty much everything is a real fly in the ointment for planners everywhere. That’s especially true if you’ve been working to attend law school in the near future.

The Law School Admission Council, the group that administers the LSAT, has already canceled the March administration of the traditional law school entrance exam, and whether the April test day follows suit is up in the air. What is the preparing law school hopeful to do?

Well, they may want to consider taking the GRE. An increasing number of law schools (currently over 30!) are willing to take the GRE in lieu of the LSAT in admissions decisions. And because of COVID-19, the GRE is being offered from the comfort — and more importantly, safety — of your own home. From ETS, the administrators of the GRE:

To meet the needs of students who are unable to take the GRE^® General Test at a test center due to public health concerns, ETS is temporarily offering a GRE General Test at home option in selected areas. The test is identical in content, format and on-screen experience to the GRE General Test taken at a test center. It is taken on your own computer at home and is monitored by a human proctor online through ProctorU^®.

For those law school hopefuls trying to weigh the value of taking the GRE, here are the 30+ schools that accept the GRE for admissions purposes:

And we are likely to only see the GRE trend continue. According to a survey by Kaplan Test Prep, a full 25 percent of law schools have plans to accept the GRE. Another Kaplan study determined 49 percent of students surveyed support the move to the GRE.

Even though more and more law schools are on board with the GRE, the  body responsible for law school accreditation, the American Bar Association, hasn’t officially weighed in on using anything other than the LSAT in admissions. ABA accreditation Standard 503 currently mandates that law schools require admissions testing and that the test used be “valid and reliable.” Whether the GRE meets that standard, the ABA hasn’t officially said. But now that so many law schools have moved on the GRE and are accepting students based on their score on that test, it might be impossible to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Now the pressure is really on the LSAC to see if they’re able to provide wannabe law students with a similar option.

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).

Much of what follows was drafted before I heard the soul-wrenching news of David Lat’s medical condition. David gave me this gig, was my first editor, and has long been a shining example of how entrepreneurial lawyers can contribute to society and our profession in manifold ways. My sincere hope is that he and all other victims of this virus be blessed with immediate and full recoveries.

To say these are strange times would be an understatement. My four children have been home for school for over a week, attending classes over Zoom. (My oldest son had his SAT canceled, and every indication is that his AP exams may also be canceled or delayed as well.) Their social interactions have been limited to talking to friends over FaceTime or while playing squads in FortNite. We have to remind everyone in the house to get outside for some fresh air. Life has shrunk to a radius of a few blocks, as I am sure it has for many of my fellow New Yorkers. Stores are rationing everything from toilet paper to chicken. The busy streets of Brooklyn look like they do when a blizzard is raging. Except there is no snow. Or wind. And the air was just starting to smell like spring.

We are lucky. We have a house, access to both private and public transportation if needed, and somewhere more spread out to run to if things get worse in the city. This is normally a slow time for my wife’s home-based business, selling educational toys, but she has seen increased demand from parents coping with schools closed and kids home all day. For now, she has the inventory to meet that demand. But with the tightening of the movement restrictions, there is no way for her to deliver her goods. So she arranges porch-pickups, like a reverse milkman. As for my law practice, I have long been comfortable getting work done from home, dating back to my days as a Biglaw associate when I would work on briefs at midnight or later, so that my time in the office would be less constrained. Our professional lives continue, even as things become more surreal with each passing day.

Since starting our firm in 2013, leading to even more control over my personal schedule, I have become even more practiced staying productive at home. Whether that means late-night phone calls with clients in Asia, or early morning consultations with investors looking for guidance on patent litigation situations, work gets done no matter where I am. But the amount and timing of when that work needs to get done remains somewhat outside my control, as I am sure it is for nearly all readers of this column.

In fact, because of the number of matters I have been handling involving Asian parties lately, the issues caused by the virus have been on my mind for months. In those cases where I am working with patent owners pursuing licensing discussions with Chinese companies, or even where US-based licensing targets are seeking indemnification from Chinese suppliers, communication and progress has been more difficult for a while. Likewise, litigating against Chinese-based companies has led to delays in active cases, including some that have required court intervention to address in terms of adjusting previously agreed to schedules. Now, of course, anything litigation-related seems to have been suspended in time, as court access becomes restricted nationwide and discovery becomes impossible to conduct.

Despite the court closures — and in the early days of this unprecedented societal disruption — some of the biggest news last week in the IP world centered on a new case filing, where an investor-backed litigation vehicle wielding former Theranos (of all things) patents had the misfortune of filing a new case against a company that had just announced that it was knee-deep in the critical work of deploying coronavirus tests. Condemnation was swift, including statements calling the filing “tone-deaf” and a prime example of why patent assertion should essentially be criminalized. Reports that the lawyers involved in filing the case had received death threats soon followed, along with a commitment from the plaintiff that it would grant a royalty-free license for anything related to coronavirus testing.

Originally, my thought was that this filing was a prime example of prestigious IP lawyers living in the Biglaw bubble failing to anticipate the public outcry that would ensue from such an ill-timed filing. But even though I can understand why something like that could happen — and think that someone on either the client or lawyer side should always be tasked with raising the question of whether a particular filing is advisable (e.g. the US Soccer debacle recently that led to female players covering their crest as they took the field for their country) from a PR perspective — it actually turns out that the plaintiff had no idea of the coronavirus tests when it filed its suit. Whether the truth will ultimately matter in the public narrative of this case is unclear. Even after that information came out, there were still calls for the plaintiff to drop the case, for one. While antipatent animus may inform the public outcry to a certain extent, it is also true that everyone has been very quick to take sides on this issue.

Ultimately, this situation confirms that tensions still run high in the patent debate — and that the current crisis could serve to inflame those tensions. There are those who think all patent assertions are trollish, just as there are defenders of what most of us would consider overly aggressive or even tone-deaf behavior by patent plaintiffs. Of course, these are minor concerns considering the public health crisis that has overwhelmed life around the world. There is much we don’t know — and the uncertainties pile up with each passing day. One thing that is for sure is that litigation activity is going to take a while to get back to normal, including for IP disputes. And who knows when normal life will return nationwide. For now we are all in bubbles. Yet we are also more dependent on each other than ever. Maybe the experience will make us a little more measured and less quick to pop someone else’s bubble.

Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.

Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.

Zimbabwe recorded its first official COVID-19 fatality when a young media personality Zororo Makamba, succumbed to the pandemic yesterday. In light of this heavy blow, Tutuma Zimbabwe is of the view that the Government of Zimbabwe must be more compelled now, than ever, to ensure that there are decentralized facilities accessible by citizens to deal with COVID-19.

We acknowledge the critical issues regarding protective clothing, raised by health service delivery workers and implore upon the Government of Zimbabwe to own up and take responsibility to ensure that the genuine demands are met and that no further lives are lost due to lack of ESSENTIAL SUPPLIES.
We further call on the President ED Mnangagwa to show leadership and consider the critical decision of locking down as the most effective way of handling challenges associatedwiththeCOVID-19 outbreak.

Continued allowance of public gatherings of no more than 50 people, the opening of informal markets and business as usual by non-essential sectors of the market is unacceptable. While acknowledging that Zimbabwe economy is largely informal, we note that our health facilities are ill-equipped and prepared to handle the inevitable consequence of continued business. The risk far outweighs the short-term benefits!

Tutumaimploresuponallstakeholders, that is, churches, media, businesses and civics to provide leadership and shutdown.

Citizens, stay at home! At this juncture, social distancing is love!

Post published in: Featured

There’s not much that needs to be said here that wasn’t laid out in the headline. Judge Steven Seeger hasn’t been on the federal bench for long, having only joined the Northern District of Illinois late last year, but he’s already drawn up his first iconic order rejecting a motion to reconsider the scheduling of a temporary restraining order hearing.

Over unicorns.

Maybe read the room before you file.

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.

* A lawyer for the Red Sox is adamant that the franchise is not guilty of sign stealing. But underhanded tactics is kind of a tradition for Boston-area teams… [Yahoo News]

* A former staffer for Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has filed a class action lawsuit alleging that numerous staffers were promised jobs through November and were actually laid off after Bloomberg suspended his campaign. [Hill]

* A Detroit courthouse has been disinfected after an attorney who visited the courthouse tested positive for COVID-19. If Detroit’s courts are even open, they’re a few weeks behind New York and New Jersey… [Detroit Free Press]

* The New Jersey Attorney General has said that citizens who break a stay-at-home order may face jail time or fines of up to $1,000. [Hill]

* Goldman Sachs paid its top in-house lawyer over $8 Million last year. I’m in the wrong field. [Bloomberg Law]

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.

Zororo was the son of business mogul and Zanu PF politician James Makamba. Family spokesperson Tawanda Makamba, elder brother to Zororo, spoke to Daily News reporter Sindiso Mhlope and below is the verbatim extract.

Zororo was in New York for 20 days and when he came back he had a slight flue, a cold. He then went to his general practitioner and they checked him for coronavirus symptoms and they said he didn’t have them at the time.

He was just told that he had a cough and a flue because in New York it’s cold and here it’s hot, so they then treated him for flue and he came back home.

On Friday last week he started developing a fever and his doctor recommended that he had to be admitted. This is because Zororo had a tumour removed from just under his left lung last year in November and he was under an 18-month recovery time-frame.

His immune system was already compromised, so the doctor was very keen that he gets into the hospital and receives proper medication to help him get over the flue and fever.

He was further advised to go to Wilkins Hospital to test for the coronavirus. He arrived at Wilkins Hospital by 10 am and samples were collected from him and we were told that the results would be in after 6 hours.

After 6 hours there were no results and his general practitioner called to find out why the results had not been availed yet. The hospitals officials then told the GPA that they had not run the tests yet they were waiting for samples from provincial hospitals to run them all at once.

The doctor got frustrated and started questioning why they had not run the tests given that Zororo’s condition was deteriorating. After some time they then decided to run the test and in the meantime we took him home and he needed oxygen.

His GPA phoned around and an ambulance came home to deliver the oxygen and then we got the positive results for coronavirus at about 1:30 or 2:00am the following day.
They told us that now that they had confirmed that he had the virus he had to be taken to the Wilkins Hospital for treatment.

We then inquired if we could him bring immediately and we were told that the hospital was not ready to receive coronavirus patients.

So in the morning we waited and waited and they were still not ready to admit him. He ended up being admitted around 10am and 11am.

His doctor made it clear earlier on that he had to be on a ventilator because he could not breathe. However, when we got at Wilkins Hospital there was no ventilator, no medication and even the oxygen would run out and they had to get it from the City of Harare.

After that we ran around to find a ventilator for him and we managed to get a portable ventilator from a family friend who had a relative who used the ventilator before he died.

In terms of medicine you need to breathe, they didn’t have it there, we had to go and buy it in South Africa. We ended up finding some today (yesterday)just as he was passing away at a local pharmacy, yet the hospital was telling us it was not locally available.

We then brought the ventilator on Sunday by 2pm and when we got here, because the portable ventilator had an American plug, they told us to get an adapter because they only had round sockets at the hospital. I then rushed to buy an adapter and came back and they never used it and when I asked why they were not using the ventilator they said they had no sockets in his room. So they didn’t have medication, ventilators and we brought them a ventilator and they didn’t have sockets in his room. I told them that I had an extension cord and pleaded with them to use the cord, but they refused.
They forced us to come here, but failed to deliver on their promise. When Zororo had his operation, he had it at Health Point Clinic. I contacted the people at Health Point and asked if they were willing to take Zororo in and they said yes and that they had already set up a facility to accommodate him.
We then appealed to Health minister Obadiah Moyo that since you are not prepared at Wilkins Hospital can we take him to Health Point and he refused.

Minister Moyo said we could not take him there and that needed to be treated at Wilkins. We were puzzled and wondered how he could say that Zororo should be treated at Wilkins when they don’t even have plugs in his room to connect the ventilator.

He promised us all sorts of things that this morning (yesterday) they would definitely be a ventilator and equipment but nothing materialised. If you go inside there you will see that they are not prepared to handle cases this side.

The minister at some point also suggested that we could take him to a trauma centre in Borrowdale. When it was now time for us to go to Borrowdale trauma they refused us to go there.

Instead they got the owner of Borrowdale Trauma Centre to call me and he told me that he could come and set up an ICU at Wilkins for Zororo complete with a ventilator and monitors, but he said that we had to pay US$120 000 for the equipment.

He added that once Zororo finishes using the equipment and recovers we had to donate the equipment to Wilkins Hospital. So basically the hospital wanted us to buy the equipment for them. We don’t have US$120 000 and it is not our responsibility to buy equipment for the government.

On top of that, remember this is a critical patient, nurses would only visit him after two hours because they were afraid of handling his situation. We had to phone from home, calling the nurse station to tell them that Zororo was in distress and that his oxygen was finished because they were not going to check on him.

It even got to a point where they were telling us that we are bothering them but Zororo was struggling in there.

My mother and his fiancé have been parked out here for the past two days and they wouldn’t allow us to come in.

The minister lied to us on many occasions. He lied to us that they were going to bring equipment and doctors but nothing ever materialised.

We reached out to President Emmerson Mnangagwa and First Lady Auxilia Mnangagwa who promised us that Zororo could be transferred to Beatrice and that there was a room for him. Nothing came out of this.
We even appealed to them saying that if they have failed then they should allow us to take him home and treat him ourselves because really what he needed was oxygen.

At the end before he died, he kept telling us that he was alone and scared and the staff was refusing to help him to a point where he got up and tried to walk out and they were trying to restrain him.
So this is how my younger brother ended up dying. I want people to know that the government is lying.
Remember at some point I spoke to the president and he was saying that the report he received about Wilkins from the Health minister is that there is equipment and medicine.

However, right now they don’t even have water at Wilkins. So if you come here to be treated for corona there is absolutely no treatment you will get, you will die.

I am not a healthcare giver but I have respect for nurses and doctors. The doctor we were in contact with here at Wilkins would turn off his phone yet he was the critical contact person, the nurses also refused to help us.

So people need to know that the government is ill-prepared, it is not ready to deal with this virus.
Right now we have been outside since 12pm and they have not given us his body, neither have they told us the way forward.

Zororo passed away between 11am and 12pm today (yesterday) and the hospital called us to come and look at his body. When we got there, we were, however, told that they had already put his body in a body bag and taken it to the mortuary.

Until now at 5pm we have been waiting for further communication and they have not even given us any of his belongings.

This is such a heart-breaking experience for us and it goes to show the lack of seriousness our government has in dealing with the coronavirus.

Post published in: Featured

Zororo Makamba was one of the two people who tested positive for coronavirus on Saturday.

He was admitted to hospital in the capital Harare after exhibiting flu-like symptoms last Thursday, the health ministry said in a statement.

Makamba contracted the disease while he was in New York and was in isolation at Wilkins hospital, Harare’s only isolation facility.

TV personality and executive producer, Vimbai Muthinhiri said Makamba was like a brother to her and their families were close growing up.

“Zororo embodied what comes to mind when we talk about Africa’s next generation being our hope,” Muthinhiri said.

“He was Zo, our little brother and ever happy friend who always saw a silver lining in every situation. It’s so difficult to accept that someone who was so full of life will no longer call to check in again,” she added.

Makamba as a high school student where he frequently won awards and trophies, his friend Vimbai Muthinhiri said.

Zimbabwe’s information minister, Monica Mutsvangwa, said she received the news with “extreme sadness and deep sense of shock.”

Makamba had traveled to New York on February 29 and returned to his home in Harare on March 9.

He began to exhibit mild flu-like symptoms a few days later on March 12. He then contacted his doctor a week later and he was advised to self isolate, the Health Minister Obadiah Moyo said in the statement.

On arrival at hospital, Makamba developed severe respiratory distress and was kept in isolation under supervision from health practitioners.

Authorities are now tracing people who came into contact with him.

Mutsvangwa urged the nation to take precautions against Covid-19 after Zimbabwe confirmed its first case late last week.

“As we mourn him the whole nation should take the threat of COVID 1 very seriously. Let’s all follow due medical precautions as announced by the Ministry of Health and by the World Health Organization,” Mutsvangwa said.

Meanwhile, in an address to the nation on Monday night, Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced the closure of all borders except for returning residents and cargo effective immediately.

Mnangagwa also announced that all gatherings over 50 people will be banned and bars, nightclubs, gyms and swimming pools will be closed in an effort to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Columbus Mavhunga contributed to this report from Harare, Zimbabwe.

David Green, CEO of the crafting behemoth Hobby Lobby, has always run his business according to strict Christian principles.  That’s why he sued the federal government to overturn the ACA’s contraceptive mandate, because what’s the purpose of religious freedom if you can’t use it to stop your employees getting birth control? So naturally, the CEO consulted the man upstairs on how best to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. And after much prayerful reflection, Green has decided that, until the Health Department or Jesus Christ himself shut them down, all 900-plus Hobby Lobbys are staying open.

“In my family, [my wife] Barbara is the prayer warrior,” Green allegedly wrote to his 32,000 employees, who were doubtless reassured that Mrs. Green’s prayers are shielding them like an impenetrable veil of holy Purell.

He continued:

In her quiet prayer time this past week, the Lord put on Barbara’s heart three profound words to remind us that He’s in control. Guide, Guard, and Groom. We serve a God who will Guide us through this storm, who will Guard us as we travel to places never seen before, and who, as a result of this experience, will Groom us to be better than we could have ever thought possible before now.

Then Green, whose net worth is $6 billion, warned that “we may all have to ‘tighten our belts’ over the near future” to maintain the company’s low debt ratio.

And you thought your managing partner was dysfunctional!

Now, to be fair, this memo has not been authenticated by Hobby Lobby’s corporate offices. But neither has it been denied, and today Business Insider reached out to a Hobby Lobby regional manager, who confirmed that the company intends to stay open come H-E-double-hockey-sticks or high water.

“Our management has doubled down on the work stance, and the district manager has said that our stores will remain open until the National Guard comes in and physically shuts the buildings down,” the source told BI. Idle hands — and cash registers — are the devil’s playground after all, so it’s essential to the health of the nation that customers can browse for Mod Podge in a national emergency,.

The source also authenticated a March 23 all-employee memo from Randy Betts, Senior VP of Store Operations detailing plans for stores closed by local ordinance which recently surfaced online.

If stores are shuttered by local authorities, employees will be forced to exhaust “all available paid time-off benefits (e.g., Vacation Pay, Personal Time Off, Personal/Sick Pay),” after which they’ll be eligible for “75% of their regular rate of pay for two weeks following the exhaustion of all available paid time off benefits.” Two whole weeks, how very X-tian!

After the two weeks, employees will be cast out into the wilderness, where they are “encouraged to contact their local unemployment offices to determine whether they are eligible for unemployment benefits.”

Employees who are sick or who come into contact with a sick person “should request time off, a leave of absence, or an accommodation related to COVID-19.” None of those words sound like paid sick leave. In fact, they sound like a strong disincentive for hourly workers, dependent on Hobby Lobby for their income and health insurance, to STFU and keep coming to work if they’ve been exposed to a person with a COVID-19 diagnosis.

No doubt, these employees on “unpaid leave of absence until further notice” will take comfort in the sermonizing of their billionaire overlord, who writes, “My and Barbara’s confidence, and comfort, comes in large part from knowing that you are a part of our Hobby Lobby family.”

Does Hobby Lobby sell a needle with an eye big enough for a rich man to get into heaven after firing employees who are exposed to a highly contagious virus at work when “an employee or customer reports that he/she has been diagnosed with COVID-19?” Asking for a well known American craft tycoon!

In a leaked memo, Hobby Lobby refuses to give workers paid sick leave during the coronavirus pandemic [Business Insider]