The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics recently published a special supplement stating: "The public health emergencies the nation faces today require urgent and highly complex responses that involve multiple governments, agencies, jurisdictions, and social sectors." This quote emphasizes the critical importance of preparation by the legal profession to deal with public health emergencies. During a time of crisis attorneys cannot afford to offer irrational and dysfunctional responses to client needs.

How many attorneys are prepared to deal with a natural or manmade crisis in regard to family, clients and community? Are attorneys ready to deal with martial law, disease surveillance; control of movement through quarantine and isolation, government use of private property; allocation of vaccines, medicine and medical supplies; and evacuation of populations?

After 9-11 attorneys in New York City had problems with lack of mail, lack of utilities, employees succumbing to repertory illness, lack of transportation and numerous other problems they had to overcome before they even began to deal with legal aspects of the disaster.

An attorney’s involvement in public health issues can be as simple as representing a client whose minor daughter was bitten by the neighbors ferret, to protecting client interests in a toxic spill incident, to offering advice to clients on how to survive economically and seek public assistance in the event of large scale devastation. Not the least concern to attorneys in private practice should be how their own practice might survive a natural or manmade disaster.