Client lunches are on hold for the foreseeable future. There's no delivery order coming in to feed a team of associates working late to meet a deadline. And that big celebratory night out to mark the ascension to partnership? Not happening.

Instead, Arnold & Porter has found another way to support the ailing restaurant industry, in the form of a 70-plus attorney pro bono effort. The firm has teamed up with the James Beard Foundation, the New York City-based nonprofit that celebrates chefs and food culture, to help restaurant workers and owners respond to the cataclysmic effects of COVID-19 on their livelihoods.

"This is a large group of people who are hardworking and self-sufficient and, through no fault of their own, are without a source of income at the moment," said Dan Cantor, who chairs the firm's pro bono committee.

A recent report from the Brookings Institution found that food preparation and service is the second most common occupation in the U.S., while waiting tables is ranked No. 8. But closures to limit the spread of the coronavirus have left a substantial number of the 12 million Americans working at over 600,000 food service and drinking establishments nationwide in perilous financial condition.

Cantor said that as the CARES Act began to take shape in late March, he began to recognize that the firm's particular strength in regulatory issues could help individuals who had suddenly been thrust into a regulatory regime that they weren't familiar with and was changing rapidly.

A mutual contact put the firm in touch with the Beard Foundation, which itself has launched a relief fund to provide micro-grants to independent food and beverage businesses in need.

"We quickly realized that there was a real synchronicity to work together," Cantor said of the first call between the two back in March. "We quickly worked up a plan to get the word out and build up a program."

The foundation is using its visibility in the restaurant community across the country to spread the word that Arnold & Porter attorneys in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver are offering their support, and it provides attorney email contacts to workers.

The firm's attorneys then guide individuals toward unemployment benefits and other forms of relief, while helping those who've been denied benefits launch appeals.

"There's a fair amount of frustration," Cantor said. "Right now, on the computer systems it's hard to field a claim, and if one has a question, it's hard to get through on the phone lines."

As an offshoot, Arnold & Porter this week also started working with owners of independent restaurants, structuring a program with the Beard Foundation where the firm's transactional attorneys provide one-on-one consulting. These owners, who wouldn't normally have access to legal assistance, can learn what subsidies and loans are likely to be most beneficial, and also make sense of forgiveness provisions as well as general contractual issues.

"This support is incredibly important to every small business owner and restaurant worker in the industry who may not have the resources at this time to get professional legal guidance," Clare Reichenbach, CEO of the James Beard Foundation, said in a statement.

Nonetheless, one firm's pro bono effort won't be enough to reverse the grim outlook for the industry. And given how critical restaurants are for the broader economy, that's not just a concern for the many lawyers out there who take eating well very seriously. One restaurant owner called the $1,200 stimulus checks forthcoming under the CARES Act a "band-aid on a gunshot wound," according to the Brookings report.

"I do not want to incite panic and hysteria, but I think for restaurants and the service industry, there is going to be a morbidly high business death rate," food world icon David Chang said in a recent interview in The New York Times.

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