Mayer Brown partner Nicole Saharsky comments in the Bloomberg Law article “Zoom Courts Will Stick Around as Virus Forces Seismic Change,” which explores the future of virtual court proceedings post-pandemic. “Ideally you want it to just be a conversation between you and the judge during oral arguments about your side of things and why your client is right, and it’s just easier to have a conversation like that in person.” – Nicole Saharsky Read the…

The Japanese government announced that it is banning entry in principle of foreigners who have visited Kenya, Venezuela and 15 other countries for the past 14 days prior to arriving in Japan.  In addition, all Japanese citizens (and any foreigners excluded from the entry ban) who have visited any of the countries subject to the entry ban will be subject to PCR testing upon arrival and will be asked to self-isolate for 14 days.  The…

US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency within Homeland Security responsible for adjudicating applications and petitions seeking immigration and naturalization benefits, announced on Friday that staffing furloughs originally planned to begin August 3, have been delayed until August 31.  The delays, which could have affected some 70% of USCIS staff engaged in processing these benefits, stemmed from an allegedly “crippling budget shortfall” stemming from agency predictions of  a 61% drop in application and petition…

In this Blogpost, James Ferguson recaps on a recent webinar he participated in on “Arbitrating COVID-19 Contract Disputes” with his colleagues from London, Singapore, Frankfurt and Rio de Janeiro.  The discussion included the key issues likely to arise in arbitrations of COVID-19 contract disputes under both common law and civil law principles.  The speakers started by describing four examples of contractual disputes arising from the pandemic, they then used the four examples to identify 10…

On 25 June 2020, the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill (the “Bill”) received Royal Assent and on 26 June 2020 CIGA came into force. The restructuring team in Mayer Brown’s London office have previously commented on the different elements of the Bill in a series of blog posts and podcasts. CIGA was swiftly followed by the introduction of The Pension Protection Fund (Moratorium and Arrangements and Reconstruction for Companies in Financial Difficulty) Regulations 2020…

Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts announced that the federal government has agreed to rescind, on a nationwide basis, a policy that could have required hundreds of thousands of immigrant students studying at U.S. institutions to leave the country and likely curtail their studies. In the litigation challenging this policy, Mayer Brown represented and filed an amici curiae brief on behalf of 19 businesses and business associations that collectively power the…