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44 ■ JUNE 14, 2021 OPINION

The Times They Are A-Changin’

By Mark Dubois

nbelievably, the first half of 2021 is gone.
I was running a half marathon in March
Uand remarked to the doctor who was run-
ning with me that just a year before I had been flat
on my back with COVID, considering whether to
change my living will to allow a ventilator.
I ventured over to the State Library the other
day to do some legislative history. As I entered
the reading room I felt like Proust eating the
madeleine in “A La Recherche du Temps Perdu”;
the memory of times past, battles won and lost,
friends gone flooding over me. I’ve now passed the
mandatory retirement age for judges and under-
stand the wisdom attendant upon forced passing
of the baton. While I remembered the 1986 leg-
islative debate I was researching like it happened
last week, I would be hard-pressed to tell you what Former Connecticut Chief Disciplinary Counsel
I had for dinner last night. Mark Dubois.
I suppose that every decade has its high points, awesome. Disciplinary Counsel and the Grievance
but I think the last year has to be remembered as Committee still mandate some in-person CLE for
a real inflection point. Unlike some of my friends, lawyers serving penance, but I think that’s more
I think the shift of a lot of what we do to hybrid or punitive than content-driven. The fact that very
totally remote platforms is great. I’ve taught law few providers are rushing back to live sessions
school both in person and remotely, and while it’s may force them to abandon that idea altogether.
hard to embrace Socratic dialogue on a tube, for Stephen Dubner has a good Freakonomics
convenience and access, the online world is in- podcast on the future of the virtual office. He in-
comparable. Ditto short calendar arguments. Yes, terviewed Morris Davis from Rutgers and Raj
we all miss the socialization of 50 or 60 lawyers sit- Choudhury from Harvard. They’ve both done re-
ting in a courtroom taking turns to argue motions, search on the future of work, and while the triple
but who misses the commute, the parking, the threat of the fridge, the bed and the TV might give
metal detector, the bad coffee and the challenge of some managers nightmares, it turns out that to the
being in two courthouses at the same time? extent you can empirically measure productivity,
I’ve now presented a bunch of Zoom seminars, remote platforms don’t cause any loss of efficiency.
done a podcast and attended some national meet- Listen to the podcast!
ings, all without leaving my home office and while I was on a Teams argument the other day when
wearing sweatpants. While I enjoy train travel, I Disciplinary Counsel raised the issue of whether
hate airplanes. Being able to meet with and hear I could adequately supervise a suspended lawyer
from peers from around the country with my cat while working from the Cape. My position was
on my lap (and sometimes on my keyboard) is that as everything he was going to do would be

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