A look at how our colleagues adjusted during the early days of Shelter in Place!
A glimpse of the new normal for Mark Broughton PC, Zoom hearings and meeting.
Darcy Brown is trying to look at the bright side when it comes to the Covid upheaval. The Staff Attorney for the Housing Team at Central California Legal Services says “It feels good to wind down at the end of such a challenging week. I'm streaming yoga classes at home,” adding “Yes, we are allowed to work from home as of yesterday. And this is what the playroom looks like!”
Teresa Petty and her husband, Scott Jones, are still settling into the new reality that is a law practice amid the Covid outbreak.
Petty practices Elder Law in her downtown Clovis office. She says “I have closed my office on Mondays and Fridays until the emergency orders are lifted. In addition I am only seeing clients one day a week - sanitizing after each visit. My staff has the option of not working any or all days. Lastly, I’m holding the vast majority of my consultations on the phone, FaceTime, Skype or on Zoom. Upside is that I am becoming educated in technology advantages.”
She acknowledges Elder Law can be a little trickier than other types of law in that many clients tend not to be internet savvy, adding “I’ve met with a few sitting in their cars, with me outside. It’s challenging, but getting their estate planning done/updated or addressing their concerns is really important.
Meanwhile, her husband Scott is an attorney for the CA Department of Industrial Relations, where he works on wage and hour theft cases. He is working remotely 50% percent of the time, resulting in an avalanche of files being dumped on the sofa almost daily. “And this is cleaned up” she says of the picture, noting she “brought more in from the office today.”
Mark King is among the attorneys who can directly blame Covid for courtroom problems.
“Three weeks of work in a five-week Death Penalty jury selection went down the drain one week ago Tuesday when we asked for and received a mistrial,” he says. “It was the right thing to do, though, for three reasons. One is my co-counsel is in a VERY high-risk group. A second is that it would have been unfair to put potential jurors at risk. A third is that if we HAD seated a jury, I think their concerns over potentially getting sick would have prevented them from paying full attention to the evidence. All of that was washed away by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court continuing all trials for 60 days.”
He also found Covid was a role-changer. “I have two mentors I have leaned on heavily ever since I started practicing. This morning one of them reached out to me to ask what I thought HE should do. That’s really something. Stunning. Flattering. This particular person has practiced more than a quarter century longer than I have.
As for his dapper appearance in the picture, he admits “My office is a MESS. I actually do most of my work from my house. I maintain a Fagen Suite as a place to get mail and meet clients.“
Like most of us, Joy Docktor didn’t have much time to transplant to a home office when the gravity of Covid 19 became quickly clear. This first photo shows her “office” on Day One.
But Joy says things got better as the days went on, adding “Well if we’re gonna make a thing out of this, here’s a few more pix, featuring the whole “day five” set up, more dogs and the baby gate I had to put up to keep them out from under foot, and, well, me. Staff Attorney, Central California Legal Services. Fighting the good fight. From the guest room. Ha!”
But it appears at least one pup is not happy with the change from Day One.
Joy says, “He doesn’t understand why he’s behind bars again.”
“Wish I would have taken a picture of a cleaner corner of my kitchen!”
Raquel Busani, Associate Attorney for the Erisa Law Center, sent us a picture of the scene on her first day of working remotely. Things are a little smoother now.
Raquel says “The office is fully remote now, except for one person in the office taking care of bank runs to make sure our clients’ continue receiving their checks. It's actually not too bad. I already had remote capabilities and took advantage of them when I needed to go down to L.A. for family stuff, or simply felt like working from home for a day. Obviously used them when I was out of town for mediations. So, it is not too bad for me. We have it worked out so that myself and Robert Rosati, the other attorney, take turns to go to the office and pick up whatever we need.”