Jim Walden

Jim Walden, founder and managing partner of Walden, Macht & Haran, said he began feeling much better Wednesday after losing two weeks to a sickness presumed to be COVID-19.

"I've been very lucky, I've gone my entire adult life and I've never gotten a flu. And this was as if 20 years of flu [happened] in one shot," Walden said.

Two days after Walden Macht announced, on March 12, that all employees could work remotely, Walden said he and his family headed out of the city to a weekend house in Connecticut.

On the way, his wife said she was feeling sick. She never had a serious fever but felt bad for about two weeks and eventually lost her sense of smell, Walden said. His symptoms were delayed several days and turned out to be more severe.

"I started feeling pretty bad, and on the 20th, I got the fever and then I was in," Walden said. "Over the course of the next 12 days, literally it was 'Groundhog Day.' I would wake up, I would think 'Oh, I must have a mild version, I feel better,' and by noon I was back in bed."

The family was "myopically focused" on making sure their three teenage children stayed healthy, which they have so far, Walden said. But he's wishing they had prepared better for the possibility of coronavirus, making sure they had a thermometer, a blood oximeter and the right medicine in their Connecticut house.

Stocking up is his advice to those who haven't gotten sick yet. But Walden, 54, also hopes his story will be encouraging.

"As I was laying in bed essentially enduring what was happening, I kept reading terrible news … and I just thought that obviously it wasn't a good experience, but my experience, I'm hoping, is more typical of what other people may face, if the same thing happens to them that happened to me," he said.

Because Walden's symptoms could be treated at home, he never visited a doctor in person. During a video appointment on March 30, he said his doctor told him he had a presumed case of coronavirus. The doctor also offered to prescribe a test but explained that tests were badly needed by others, so Walden opted to go without.

After two weeks of the fever affecting his concentration—Walden said he could do brief check-ins with colleagues or clients before he had to recover with hours of sleep—he's fully back to work, albeit from home. The firm still has new cases coming in, he said, even though the vast majority of papers cannot be filed while the courts remain in essential-functions-only mode due to the pandemic.

During the first week and a half of March, Walden said the firm focused on making sure everyone could work remotely.

"We basically had to invest a whole bunch of money in computer equipment and programming time to make sure that our systems were fully functional and cyber-protected," he said, along with distributing printers, extra monitors and other gear to the people who needed them.

Work is now moving ahead smoothly, Walden said, adding that he thinks the transition was easier because Walden Macht is only 5 years old and more flexible than some older firms.

Walden said the firm was founded to prioritize client service over "making every dollar that we could," and the firm's financial structure was planned with independence and stability in mind, which has been helpful in recent weeks.

"We capitalized the firm very richly at the beginning and made a substantial investment and then also agreed not to distribute all of our profits, so we generally hold back something like 20% a year, and that has served us really well, in addition to not taking any debt," he said. "So even with a reduced litigation footprint because of the court freeze, our current work easily exceeds our expenses by a fair margin."

Walden said he's confident that the firm will continue to be profitable and won't have to introduce layoffs or salary cuts. The handful of employees who can't do their jobs from home, such as the firm's receptionist, are still being paid and will continue to be paid, he said.

"There's still work to do outside of the courtroom," he said. "For example, we have depositions that we have to prepare for. We have a little bit more time now, but those depositions are still gonna occur. We have motions that are going to be due that need to be researched. So once the court freeze is lifted, I'm sure it's going to be a very intense period, but I wouldn't exactly say it's slow now either."

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