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In Search Of A Silver Lining: How The Legal Community Is Serving During COVID-19

Read on to find out how some lawyers, law students, and legal organizations are actually making the legal community proud. 

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If you’ve read this column, well ever, you know I usually write about law school and the bar exam. But right now, dealing with all of that is depressing. There are no graduations, the July/September/October bar exam situation is a nightmare. And quite frankly, I don’t think anyone wants to come here so that I can teach them how to brief a case right now.  

And, if I’m being honest, the legal community as a whole seems to not be putting its the best foot forward during this crisis and it has been kind of bumming me out. 

See: Your Bar Association COVID Board Is Probably Not The Place To Downplay COVID, Biglaw Firm Fires Staff Member Who Posted ‘Threatening’ Message About Being Forced To Wear COVID-19 Mask, and UVA Deciding Whether To Force Student To Withdraw From Law School Because Her National Guard Unit Was Called Up

So, I went on a search to find some members of the legal profession behaving the way I would expect lawyers to behave in crisis: organizing, advocating, donating, etc. I’m not going to lie, it took me a while to find anything positive, but I didn’t come up empty-handed! 

Read on to find out how some lawyers, law students, and legal organizations are actually making the legal community proud. 

The Dominican Bar Association

The Dominican Bar Association (DBA) has organized a COVID-19 Relief Initiative targeting low-income NYC Housing Authority residents, senior citizens, and low-income immigrants in the South Bronx. 

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The DBA is a nonprofit organization founded in NYC in the 1990s made up of legal professionals and law students, which supports Latino members of the legal profession, particularly attorneys and law students of Dominican ancestry, in their pursuit of higher posts in the legal profession and other facets of influence in the United States.  

As part of their COVID-19 relief initiative, the DBA is donating $10,000 worth of groceries to families that have been affected by COVID-19 in the South Bronx area. DBA has partnered with three South Bronx based organizations to complete the purchasing, packaging, and distribution of the groceries. Those organizations are The Bronx Rising Initiative, Mothers on the Move, and the Mary Mitchell Center. They will be distributing approximately 900 bags of groceries over the next three weeks. This initiative goes hand-in-hand with the DBA’s 2020 theme Nuestra Comunidad. Nuestro Legado. (Our community. Our legacy.)

The DBA is leading by example and showing how bar associations and their leaders can rise to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope their initiative encourages other organizations to engage in similar work and serves to highlight the power of coming together as a community.

Lawyers Honoring COVID Caregivers 

According to their website, Lawyers Honoring COVID Caregivers was created

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[T]o demonstrate the appreciation that members of the Massachusetts Bar have for Massachusetts first responders and caretakers (including nurses, respiratory therapists, radiology technicians, physicians, maintenance and cleaning staff, and paramedics) in the form of financial support for those who have bravely cared for the citizens of the Commonwealth and continue to do so selflessly and at great risk during the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus.

The best part? The lawyer who founded this organization, Clyde D. Bergstresser, is, wait for it, a medical malpractice attorney! That’s right, a guy who made his career suing nurses, respiratory therapists, radiology technicians, physicians, maintenance and cleaning staff, and paramedics is now the director and president of a nonprofit organization that provides them support.

If that isn’t an example of being able to put aside your differences and come together in a crisis, then I don’t know what is. 

Law students rising to the occasion 

You know you’re getting old when you start to think and say things like “the youth will save us” (or be the death of us depending on what kind of mood you catch me in). But, when it comes to COVID-19, I think it is the former. While I admittedly struggled to find uplifting news about how lawyers were responding to COVID-19, I had a much easier time with the law student response.

For example, I learned that Columbia Law School has started the PPP Pro Bono Project to help small business owners navigate the Paycheck Protection Program. University of Michigan student Maiya Monico founded the MLaw COVID Corps to offer pro bono services to Michigan organizations (and has had 200 law student volunteers sign up to date). Finally, I checked out what was going on at my own alma mater, The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University (which used to just be Pace Law School back in my day), and I discovered two stories. The first was about two students who were called up to serve with their National Guard units. The second was about a rising 2L spending her free time sewing masks and organizing local food organizations to provide meals. 

I never thought I’d be one of those people who had to “look on the bright side,” but I guess this pandemic is changing us all in different ways. While it might be hard to see a lot of good in the world, or legal community, right now, it is there if you look for it.

Kerriann Stout is a millennial law school professor and founder of Vinco (a bar exam coaching company) who is generationally trapped between her students and colleagues. Kerriann has helped hundreds of students survive law school and the bar exam with less stress and more confidence. She lives, works, and writes in the northeast. You can reach her by email at info@vincoprep.com.

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