A PAIR OF DICKINSON LAW ALUMNI LEAD IN UNPRECEDENTED TIMES
June 29, 2020 — COVID-19 posed no shortage of challenges for Dickinson Law alumni Mark J. Cutrona ’06 and Holly Vaughn Wagner ’08, who together lead the Legislative Council Division of Research in Dover, Delaware—one of only 50 legislative research bureaus in the country.
A nonpartisan and confidential reference bureau for the Delaware General Assembly, the Division provides a wide range of services, including legislative and legal research, bill drafting, and committee staffing, as well as the development, production, and distribution of public information concerning the General Assembly. The Division is also responsible for the overall supervision of the facility and scheduling building events.
Cutrona and Vaughn Wagner serve as the Division’s director and deputy director respectively, and are also lawyers for the General Assembly, providing legislative-related legal advice to legislators and staff. They have dealt with numerous, novel legal issues resulting from COVID-19, particularly as they relate to the powers of and constitutional limitations on the branches of government in an emergency.
“Our clients are all the legislators of our General Assembly, which right away puts us in a unique situation,” said Cutrona. “We are finding new ways to interact with them and are helping them to find new, legal ways to meet and legislate.”
Pre-COVID-19, client interaction was in person under circumstances that could be frantic but to which Cutrona and Vaughn Wagner were accustomed. “Now, we use virtual meeting technologies so we can continue to have face-to-face contact with legislators to discuss legal issues and legislation we draft for them,” said Cutrona. “We’re also working to create new electronic resources to provide background information to legislators on legal and policy issues that have arisen as a result of COVID-19.”
Cutrona and Vaughn Wagner provided legal advice to legislative leadership related to the General Assembly’s constitutional authority to meet using virtual meeting technology, including preparing joint rules and other documents to assist them in meeting virtually to protect members, staff, and the public during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Interestingly, we’ve used Holly’s notes from the Law and Medicine class she took at Dickinson Law in spring 2007 to help us address some of the legal issues,” said Cutrona.
As if transitioning a staff of 24 to remote working were not hard enough, the duo is also learning how to manage a remote workforce as they go. “We’ve had to quickly learn how to keep staff motivated, keep morale up, and generally support our staff through one the most unique periods in modern history,” said Vaughn Wagner.
Prior to COVID-19, only a few staff worked from home and on a very limited basis. Now, the full 24-person division works from home, with only a few staff visiting the office each week. “Because we’re all working from home, we’ve had to change how we communicate with our staff, including having more small-group and one-on-one meetings, and creating and distributing a weekly e-newsletter to ensure information being communicated is consistent and timely to all,” said Vaughn Wagner. “Changing the frequency and delivery of our communication with staff has been critical in allowing us to continue functioning using the collaborative approach that our legislative and regulatory drafting and editing requires.”
Cutrona and Vaughn Wagner are learning how to better communicate internally to assign and respond to legal issues. “In addition, dealing with these novel legal issues that need quick answers has pushed us to quicken our research to provide responses to legislators in less time due to the swiftly moving nature of these issues,” said Cutrona.