Most of this post reproduces a listserv message from TFOI Ben Davis expressing concern about universities’ plans for the fall semester. Like Ben, I am very alarmed about universities’ plans to hold classes in person considering how the virus is spiraling out of control in the US, unlike most other countries. Unfortunately, our political leaders … Continue reading University Planning for the Fall to Deal with the Crisis
This fall, American universities will face their modern rendezvous with destiny as they make momentous decisions whether to protect large communities from death and disease. Most universities plan to conduct in-person classes and are likely to become semester-long virus incubators if they stick to those plans. The situation would be very different if all government … Continue reading How Do You Ask a Person to Be the Last Person to Die for a Mistake?
From TFOI Kristen Blankley: COVID-19 has created additional need for legal services in many areas, including housing, consumer law, employment law, probate, family law, domestic violence advocacy, criminal law, among others. We all have substantive and process expertise in different areas, which means that we should have a great ability to fulfill our aspirational (or, … Continue reading Kristen Blankley: New Opportunities for Pro Bono in a Pandemic
Just shy of a year ago, many of us gathered at Pepperdine to appreciate the legacy of our movement and engage the future. How time flies. Since then, our world has been overtaken by a pandemic that is fundamentally altering all of our lives as well as an outpouring of rage about the history of … Continue reading If You’re Not Part of the Solution . . .
This post speculates about the future of continuing education programs (CEP) after a brief review of past CEPs. This is part of a series analyzing what the potential new normal as the current crisis recedes. The first post includes links to the others in the series. The Old Normal of Continuing Professional Education In the … Continue reading Continuing Professional Education in the New Normal
The ABA Journal recently published an article entitled Bar Exam Does Little to Ensure Attorney Competence, Say Lawyers in Diploma Privilege State, describing the experience in Wisconsin, the only state that currently has the “diploma privilege.” Under the Wisconsin rules, in-state law school graduates can become licensed without taking a bar exam. These graduates must … Continue reading The Coronavirus Crisis Provides an Opportunity to Adopt Better Systems for Licensing Lawyers than the Bar Exam
What do you have to hide? That’s an issue raised by two comments about my post, Communication, Privacy, and Community in the New Normal. One commenter asked, “What if the government or a private group knowing your real-time biometrics could save lives? Why do we hold the privacy of such data in such high regard?” … Continue reading The Importance of Privacy
This spring is an eerie season of death and life. Death is a natural and inevitable part of life. Humans and members of every other living species die all the time. What’s so spooky about the coronavirus crisis is that this deadly virus often is spread by people who are asymptomatic. So you can’t tell … Continue reading This Spring
For many years, Guy and Heidi Burgess have organized a series of projects dealing with difficult, intractable conflicts, and they developed an incredibly rich website of resources. They recently collected the following series of statements about conflict and the coronavirus, including the following. Here’s a list of the statements with links to each one. They … Continue reading The Coronavirus and the Constructive Conflict Initiative
An article by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, The World After Coronavirus, describes general dynamics of crises and particularly the current crisis: Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in … Continue reading Communication, Privacy, and Community in the New Normal
A recent post anticipates that as we go through the current crisis, we will develop a “crisis new normal” and, after we recover from the crisis, a “normal new normal” (NNN). At this point, governments, institutions, and individuals are still developing new routines as we wait out the crisis by doing things like sheltering in … Continue reading The Next New Normal in Law, Dispute Resolution, and Legal Education
Virtually all of us are radically changing our lives to adjust to the new realities caused by the coronavirus crisis. This is a major shock to our entire global society, and it certainly will cause major changes in the way that people and organizations think and act in the future. As governments, institutions, and individuals … Continue reading The Next New Normals – in General