Dear Clients, Colleagues and Friends:
We sincerely hope you and your families are well during this period of global anxiety. WPHK is monitoring the Coronavirus outbreak (“COVID-19”). The health and well-being of our clients and employees remains our top priority.
We are committed to doing our part to help keep everyone safe while ensuring we continue to serve our clients with minimal disruption.
At this point we are semi-restricting access to our offices unless an in-person meeting is for the execution of documents or an emergency. Our front office staff are wiping down the conference rooms after any such appointments. In order to continue to provide high quality legal services in a timely and efficient manner, WPHK will encourage implementing innovative practices. We began laying the foundation to allow our attorneys and staff to work remotely several years ago and almost all of them are accustomed to being able to serve clients even when they are not present in one of our offices. Both telephone meetings and video conferencing are already frequently used by WPHK clients. Client meetings will be conducted via telephone, teleconferencing or video conferencing (i.e.- FaceTime, Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp, GoTo Meeting, etc.). If you have any other suggested methods to correspond and communicate more effectively, please let us know.
The delivery of documents can be done electronically via email, text or Dropbox or Sharefile. If hard copies of documents need to be dropped off, we have physical drop boxes at most of our offices or call and arrangements can be made. All attorneys and staff have emails addresses and WPHK has the ability to receive text messages, photos and document images at 800-929-1725, via text.
For the execution of documents, we have mobile notaries available to meet you in your home maintaining social distance or we can accommodate you in our offices under precaution protocol. WPHK (attorneys and staff) will practice “social distancing” (no handshaking and maintaining at least six feet of distance) with clients, opposing parties, vendors and each other.
WPHK is here to help you and your business. In the coming weeks and months many of you will likely be required to navigate a myriad of difficult legal issues. For instance, we’ve already been assisting clients with issues relating to cancellation of contracts. We’ve also been working with clients to position them to deal with the possibility that many of their customers or counterparties will be seeking bankruptcy protection. We have dedicated a section of our website to COVID-19 where you will find articles written by our attorneys who have already begun to address some of these issues in an effort to provide important guidance as you begin to deal with consequences of the pandemic. As more articles and resources from our firm become available, the webpage will be updated.
As we move forward through the next several weeks and perhaps even months, please share specific needs and requests. As so many have already recognized, working together will assure that we effectively respond to the challenges we are facing and end up stronger than ever.
We encourage you to stay informed and take other necessary precautions (wash your hands thoroughly, cease handshaking, avoid touching your face and cover coughs and sneezes are some of the basic rules to follow to name a few). Much more information can be found at from the CDC and the World Health Organization.
Thank you for your understanding and we will keep you updated to any WPHK policy changes.
John Perches
Ray Kerlick
