Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week's newsletter is all about the coronavirus and how law schools are responding. But instead of zeroing on the myriad ways the pandemic is disrupting legal education, I'm highlighting some bright spots of how law professors and students are reacting to the upheaval. There's now a Facebook writing group with more than 200 legal academics sharing their writing and supporting each other. The University of Michigan Law School community is banding together to support campus workers who have lost their jobs. And Hogan Lovells is reassuring law students that it won't hold pass/fail grades against them. Read on and stay safe out there! Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ

Coronavirus Extra Credit Reading

I usually stick this section at the bottom of the briefing but since the story is moving so fast, I'm compiling my coronavirus coverage from last week in case you missed it. Law schools, including Stanford and Harvard, are starting to adopt pass/fail grading systems for the semester. (You can read a bit more about this down below.)

Also, summer associate recruiting might get moved back to January as a result of coronavirus and pass/fail grading.

Here's some ways law schools and law professors are trying to keep students engaged and connected amid the move online.

What will the coronavirus pandemic mean for the law graduate job market? It's too early to tell but there's lots of concern.

The March LSAT was canceled due to the coronavirus and the outlook for the April test in unclear.

Law schools in New York are getting individual permission from the state court to exceed the maximum number of credits that law students can complete online.

Northwestern Law Prof. Dan Rodriguez is teaching a pop-up class on law and the coronavirus.

Let Do This! (Online)

Let's say you're a law professor stuck at home, trying to figure out how to teach your new online class with a kid or two underfoot. Hunkering down on that book draft or that long-delayed law review article might be a tough ask amid the chaos and uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic. But several hundred law professors from across the country have banded together online to encourage each other to make progress on their academic work and support each other through these uncertain times.

Lisa Tucker, a professor at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, took inspiration from the National Novel Writing Month, which encourages people to write 1,600 words a day throughout April and last week formed a law-focused group dubbed the National Coronavirus Writing Movement (NaCoWriMo) on Facebook. Participants commit to writing anywhere from 200 to 1,000 words a day, to supporting other academics in the groups, and asking for and offering to critique others' work once a week. She started the group with just a few friends, but within days is expanded to more than 200 legal academics.

"It has been a really lovely, come-together type thing," Tucker told me last week. "It has been really cool to see all these people across the country who have been feeling at loose ends all coming together. Last night, we had somebody who was really struggling and feeling anxious about the world. She said, 'I joined the group and committed to writing, but I feel like can't get any writing done.' And the group really encouraged her and she ended up getting some writing done. People are feeling like it's good to have a support community, and it's always good to have accountability. If you tell people you're going to produce, then you're more likely to produce."

Tucker initially set a 1,000-word daily goal for group participants, but quickly realized that was too ambitious for some professors at the moment, given the fast switch to online teaching and other administrative duties.

I asked Tucker how law professors, on the whole, are doing right now. She told me that she has observed three general categories of reaction: Nearly all professors are committed to giving their students an effective learning experience for the rest of the semester, but some are struggling to understand the mechanics of teaching online. And quite a few are having to work out the logistics of two people working from home while also taking care of their children. And some professors are focused on the legal and Constitutional impacts of the pandemic and what it means for the United States as a country, she told me.

But amid all that, NaCoWriMo has emerged as a bright spot for participants. Law professors who want to join can find the group on Facebook and request to join. Tucker will check to verify that the requester is a law professor before adding that person to the Facebook group.

"Law professors are a very cohesive community—people don't really know that," Tucker said. "We all know each other, by one degree of separation. I think it's really nice that people can come together and talk."

Coffee Talk

Apologies to anyone who doesn't get the reference in the above photo, but I figure we could all do with a little bit of levity right now.

Anyway, in case you needed a reminder of people's compassion and humanity amid predictions of dire days ahead and toilet paper hoarding, here's one out the University of Michigan Law School involving every law student's most essential beverage: coffee.

Like so many other bars and restaurants around the country, the café at the Ann Arbor school has shuttered with all in-person campus activity shut down. That's bad news for the café's five employees who are now out of work, but Michigan professors Leah Litman and Sam Bagenstos stepped in a created a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money for the workers. Within two days, the campaigned surpassed the initial $30,000 goal. As of Friday, the total stood at more than $33,000.

Litman was too busy to hop on the phone with me on Friday. (She was meeting with students-virtually, teaching a class, and recording a podcast!) But she wrote back to me with this message: "The Michigan Law (and greater University of Michigan) community response was swift and supportive. So many students, alums, faculty, administrators, and staff chipped in to help the law school cafe employees in their time of need. It made me proud to be a part of this community."

By Friday, 645 people had made donations, ranging from a high of $500 to the price of a cup of coffee. I have no doubt the café workers sure appreciate the love the law school community is showing them right now.

About Those Grades? Relax

Debate is raging among law students about how their schools should handle grading for the spring semester. Stanford, Cornell and Berkeley have adopted pass/fail systems, while Harvard and Michigan announced that they are giving students the option to go pass/fail or stick with the normal grading scheme. Many other schools are evaluating the matter and have yet to announce any decisions on grading. (Check out my story on this linked at the top.)

Harvard later reversed course and said that pass/fail grades are mandatory this semester after hearing from students that the optional system was unfair and would disproportionately hurt the students who are struggling the most right now.

So that sets the stage for what I'm really getting at, which is that law firms are starting to come out of the woodwork to reassure law students that they won't hold a semester of pass/fail grading against job candidates. Hogan Lovells issued a statement Friday that said the firm looks at far more than just grades in hiring, that it appreciates the unprecedented circumstances students and schools now find themselves in, and that students will have the opportunity to "tell us your story when the time comes" for job interviews.

"We appreciate that students at all levels of their studies are concerned about the impact COVID-19 might have on how they might be assessed in the future. We wanted to move swiftly and put their minds at rest," said Hogan Lovells chief human resources officer Allison Friend.

Will more firms follow suit? It seems like the humane thing to do given the myriad stressors law students are dealing with right now. Let's hope they do.

Thanks for reading Ahead of the Curve. Sign up for the newsletter and check out past issues here.

I'll be back next week with more news and updates on the future of legal education. Until then, keep in touch at [email protected]