Tag Archives: Dealing with the Covid Crisis

How Many People Will Preventably Die or Get Ill if Universities Hold Classes in Person? – Part 1

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 Many People Will Preventably Die or Get Ill if Universities Hold Classes in Person? – Part 1

Kristen Blankley: New Opportunities for Pro Bono in a Pandemic

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

If You’re Not Part of the Solution . . .

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 . . .

Continuing Professional Education in the New Normal

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 Coronavirus Crisis Provides an Opportunity to Adopt Better Systems for Licensing Lawyers than the Bar Exam

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

The Importance of Privacy

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

The Coronavirus and the Constructive Conflict Initiative

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

Communication, Privacy, and Community in the New Normal

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

The Next New Normal in Law, Dispute Resolution, and Legal Education

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