Dealing with a fractured marriage is never pleasant, but doing it in the middle of a pandemic is several levels more stressful—both for the spouses and for family law attorneys who’ve had to scramble to meet an unprecedented challenge.
Government officials’ actions limiting public gatherings to stem the spread of the deadly pandemic caused by the contagious COVID-19 has led to a spate of lawsuits filed by churches, religious liberty groups and others in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia—many over restrictions on religious liberty that began around Easter.
Deepfakes have seeped into our culture and politics. As the technology grows in complexity, making it more difficult to spot fakes, attorneys and judges will have to decide how to manage deepfake evidence and authenticate it.
Long before social distancing, Zoom touted its capabilities for lawyers. And the platform is booming, with a reported jump from 10 million daily users at the end of 2019 to 200 million in March. But lawyers must be extra careful when using Zoom or any other videoconferencing tool.
Test-takers in Mississippi and North Carolina will get some early exposure to the legal system they hope to join if they plan on sitting for the July bar exam.
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For lawyers and the legal system, the issues presented by the novel coronavirus have been as novel as the virus itself. The reverberations will be long-lasting—in some cases, forever so. The ABA Journal talked to eight leading lawyers in their fields, including Gloria Allred and Robert Shapiro, about impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their practice areas.
“I am able to use my skills to help with the board, to help with meal organization, and to help with providing supplemental staffing at a time when more than ever an EMT is needed,” says lawyer Christopher Jennison, an ABA member, employment and labor counsel with the Federal Aviation Administration, and assembly clerk of the ABA’s Young Lawyers Division.
Baseball most naturally lends itself to implementing the types of social distancing measures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But sports lawyers say Major League Baseball likely has the most delicate off-the-field legal and contractual issues to iron out before the teams can play ball.
“Change must come, not just through outrage but by powerful, countervailing forces. Every state needs strong and enforced hate crime laws, prosecution of police officers who abuse their power, and top-down political resolve that this will not be tolerated,” writes the ABA Journal’s Liane Jackson.
Restaurants may often invest in substantial insurance coverage for their businesses, including purchasing “business interruption” coverage in case something beyond their control forces a shutdown of their operations. In mid-March, such an event happened: the coronavirus pandemic.
