Alumni
Six Years Later
March 13, 2020, was supposed to be memorable for one reason: the birth of my son. Months earlier, when we scheduled the induction, my OBGYN teased me about intentionally having a baby on Friday the 13th. I laughed off her nod to the superstition. Four days after I delivered, the Bay Area shut down. Like everyone else, I watched the world change overnight.
As a family law attorney, I had no idea how profoundly those changes would reshape my practice and the lives of the families I serve. For the first time in my nearly 20-year career, the courts effectively stopped. Hearings were postponed indefinitely as judges and court staff scrambled to build remote systems. New client calls dried up. In those early weeks, people were focused on far more immediate concerns than divorce.
That pause didn’t last long. By the summer of 2020, the calls started trickling back in. Then they became a flood. People called from their closets, their bathrooms, a park, a socially distanced playdate, their cars. Months of sheltering in place had exposed fractures that many couples could no longer ignore.
Six years later, that rising tidal wave hasn’t stopped. Family law calendars remain overloaded, trial dates can be more than a year away, and judges continue to rotate through family law because of burnout. But the most significant changes aren’t reflected in the caseload numbers. What stands out to me is how much conflict itself has changed. Increasingly, parties are turning to AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to represent themselves without counsel. Clients send me AI-generated memos, one client deemed me the “mean” lawyer who picks apart the work of the “nice” lawyer, Claude.
Tolerance for disagreement seems to be at an all-time low. Patience, civility, and personal connection are often lacking in ways they weren’t pre-pandemic. At the same time, disputes have become more entrenched. Co-parenting disagreements over school, medical decisions, and holidays escalate more quickly. Financial issues have grown more complicated as newly created wealth turns questions that once seemed routine into disputes worth significant amounts of money. The profession itself has changed, too.
Most client meetings remain on Zoom, and some court calendars are still remote. Opportunities to resolve cases through a hallway conversation before a hearing have largely disappeared. Yet the reasons I chose family law haven’t changed. Every day, I help people navigate one of the hardest transitions of their lives. No two cases are alike. I’ve built lasting relationships with colleagues over two decades that I cherish both professionally and personally. The facts of the cases are challenging, and even amid conflict, there are opportunities to find common ground and help families move forward. The work is demanding, but it remains deeply meaningful.
When my son was born on March 13, 2020, I didn’t know a pandemic would change my practice, the courts, and countless families in ways that are still unfolding today. But when I think about those early days now, what stands out isn’t the uncertainty; it’s the reminder that even in moments of profound disruption, life moves forward. This past June, my pandemic baby finished kindergarten. He learned to read, lost his first tooth, and fell in love with sports. After all, while the world was shutting down, a little boy was just getting started.
Marisa San Filippo is a principal with Flicker Kerin LLP in Menlo Park, California.
