Atlanta lawyers monitoring Volkswagen as it fulfilled obligations to resolve a massive environmental scandal depended on traveling to Germany and other locations around the world for nearly three years—until the pandemic shut everything down six months ago.

Larry Thompson, the former deputy U.S. attorney general leading the monitoring team, and Scott Marrah of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, were in Germany when President Donald Trump announced that travel from Europe to the United States would stop almost immediately.