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The USNWR rankings are out, not that anyone cares right now. Until the coronavirus lockdown is complete, there are really only two law schools out there so let’s rank them like U.S. News would:

1. The Zoom School of Law
RNP. Blackboard

Congratulations on joining the T1!

To commemorate this bizarre time in your professional lives — a time you’ll be telling the 2042 summer associate class all about over cocktails at an outing to an oceanside resort (given climate change models, we’ll assume this resort is in Tennessee) — you should get some swag! And while you’re at it, contribute to a good cause.

The folks over at Law School Memes for Edgy T-14s have a Zoom School of Law shirt celebrating your new law school with the proceeds going to fund food banks — which is a critically important cause with everyone losing their jobs around the country:

We, the admins of Law School Memes for Edgy T-14s, are very excited to share our school spirit with the world! 100% of the proceeds from this campaign will be donated to Feeding America, which funds a network of food banks across the US. The importance of food banks is ever increasing as schools around the country are closing, eliminating the source of two meals a day for millions of kids. Every dollar donated to Feeding America provides ten meals for families facing hunger. So rock your Zoom School of Law pride, show your grandkids this memory of what law school was like, and help us fund food banks nationwide.

Be sure to grab a shirt here.

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.

I am going to take a controversial position and say that coronavirus is bad. As I write this, on March 15, 2020, 60 of our fellow Americans have been felled by the coronavirus. Five-dozen deaths is not a trivial amount, and there are surely going to be many more before things get back to normal.

Still, I sort of get what Donald Trump was initially trying to mumble his way through on this one. It’s weird which deadly threats we choose to do something about and which we just happily ignore.

Regular old influenza killed 79,000 Americans over the 2017-18 flu season. Over the 2018-19 season, we did a bit better, losing only an estimated maximum of 57,300 of our countrymen and countrywomen. The sum total of what we’ve chosen to do about this is hang up those little flyers around offices passively suggesting that people get a flu shot that is only going to be 40 percent to 60 percent effective anyway. If we shut down public life every flu season like we’re doing right now due to the coronavirus, we could absolutely save thousands of flu victims.

Flu is kind of the low-hanging fruit in this analogy, but all sorts of other preventable things are killing thousands of us every time we all walk out the door. We fatally drove our vehicles into each other 38,000 times last year in this country. We Americans fatally poisoned 69,029 of ourselves from February 2018 to February 2019, by going out and getting, and then ingesting, far too many drugs. We shot to death 39,773 of ourselves in 2017, the last year for which reliable gun death data is available. Lots of things we could have done to prevent these deaths would have fallen far short of shutting down international travel and tanking the economy. But we didn’t do much.

If you go outside today, you’re still way more likely to get creamed by a truck or shot by your neighbor than to develop a fatal case of COVID-19. But everyone’s collective panic about one new possible way to die is ironically going to have the unintended result of preventing a lot of us from departing apropos of the many way more likely ways to die that are already out there.

In 2013, researchers at the Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing in the Netherlands released a comprehensive study looking at business cycles and mortality rates between 1950 and 2008 in 19 developed countries, including the United States. What they found is that a particularly strong economy can kill you.

“In developed countries, mortality rates increase during upward cycles in the economy and decrease during downward cycles,” one of the researchers, Herbert J. A. Rolden, wrote. For every one percent increase in GDP, researchers found that the death rate for older men (age 70 to 74) in developed countries increased by about a third of a percentage point. The death rate for middle-aged men (defined as those age 40 to 44) increased even more than it did for older men, by 0.38 percent. Surprising no one, a surging economy wasn’t quite as dangerous for women, but older women and middle-aged women still saw 0.18 percent and 0.15 percent increases in their mortality rates, respectively, for every one percent boost to GDP.

To give you an idea of what this means, the current overall U.S. death rate is 8.880 deaths per 1000 people, so a 0.38 percent increase in that would be about 8.914 deaths per 1000 people. In a country of 372.2 million people, that’s an extra 12,655 deaths per year.

Researchers haven’t exactly nailed down the mechanisms behind this effect. I’d say it’s pretty intuitive though to think that when more of us have money to drive around frivolously, to buy guns with which to shoot ourselves and one another, and to purchase unregulated drugs, probably more of us are going to die.

So, it’s strange that we’ve decided to take one threat seriously and basically shut down public life over the 60 American deaths it has caused (so far), while doing next to nothing about hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths we were already facing every single year. But hey, even if the threat posed by coronavirus turns out to be overblown, at least we’re not totally wasting our time here. The economic fallout from the coronavirus panic is probably going to be enough to save thousands who would have died of entirely different dangers but for all of us staying at home. We could do worse than doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

* Michael Cohen’s lawyers have argued that President Trump’s former personal lawyer should leave prison early because of COVID-19. A lot of lawyers seem to be making hay of the COVID-19 pandemic. [Yahoo News]

* A San Antonio attorney has been arrested for firing a gun outside of his ex-girlfriend’s workplace and stealing from her car. [San Antonio Current]

* Apparently, attorneys in Kentucky can threaten to kill each other without fear of facing bar consequences. [Courier Journal]

* A Texas inmate’s execution has been delayed because his attorney argued that holding the execution might help spread COVID-19. [CBS News]

* New York has suspended debt collection efforts due to issues surrounding COVID-19. Don’t go crazy on your credit cards, the suspension is only scheduled to last 30 days. [Hill]

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.

According to USNWR’s 2021 law school rankings, which law school rose the greatest number of spots in the ranking over last year?

Hint: The school is up 25 spots. Impressive. But with a ranking of 107, there is still a ways to climb.

See the answer on the next page.

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.

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)]

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.)

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).