The U.S. Supreme Court's extraordinary postponement of its March argument session injected new uncertainty into a high-stakes process for a small group of advocates and their clients who said now they will work "to stay fresh" in hopes of getting their turn at the lectern.

The justices had scheduled 11 hours of oral argument during the March session in cases including the major copyright dispute between Google and Oracle, the secrecy of President Donald Trump's financial records, and job bias suits against religious employers. The court, citing the threat of the novel coronavirus, said it would reschedule arguments at a date yet to be announced.

The advocates who were in the final throes of argument preparation for those cases represented a mix of longtime high court veterans such as E. Joshua Rosenkranz, co-head of the Supreme Court and appellate practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, and Thomas Goldstein of Goldstein & Russell. They also included lawyers prepared to make their debuts, including Ramzi Kassem, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law, and the founder of its CLEAR clinic, which represents the respondents in Tanzin v. Tanvir in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights and Debevoise & Plimpton.