Like many other things in 2020, courts had to adapt their processes to accommodate a global pandemic; having multiple people go down and meet in person in a courtroom just wasn’t a possibility. After coming to an abrupt stop, the courts in BC made an unprecedented pivot and joined the online world. Now, a year later, we have the opportunity to examine that shift. This blog post looks at the transition to online court and its impact on the business of practicing law.
TIME
The first advantage of online court that might come to mind, especially for lawyers outside of urban centres, is that it will save them time. They won’t have to schedule in the travel time to and from the court. They might not have to show up for the morning session in remand court, and then wait around twiddling their thumbs for two hours until their client’s hearing actually occurs. Instead, they can use all of that new found time to get more work done, bill more hours, and maybe even get home before dinner. There are some cost savings here as well – they don’t have to pay for parking while at court. They can make lunch at home instead of eating takeout. They only have to wear their fancy court suit for the actual time they’re in court, not the whole day – the dry cleaning savings from that alone will add up quickly. They’ll save gas money. The list goes on.
But, all of that time they saved not commuting might be too good to be true. During Dispute Resolution Week at TRU, one of the guest speakers in the third year class indicated that remote hearings take much, much longer than in person hearings used to. He stated that he is now in the practice of asking the judge for twice as much time as he used to in the pre-virtual days. And that judges don’t even hesitate when agreeing to that request. A trial that would have taken three days to complete pre-covid is now taking six. This is because, as we are all now painfully aware, technical difficulties are the rule, not the exception. It is almost a given that at some point during a hearing, someone’s internet will lag. Or someone’s microphone won’t work. Someone won’t be able to log in to the hearing without restarting their computer first. Or they won’t be able to find a document on their computer that they need to as quickly as they would if it was printed out, tabbed, and opened to the correct page in front of them already.
From a business perspective, this additional time means that a trial that you would have billed 16 hours for, you’re now billing 32. You might only be able to do half as many trials as before (because each trial is taking twice as long), but it doesn’t affect your bottom line that much. But, what about the client who has to pay that bill? How is it fair that you get to save time and money by not having to travel to the physical courthouse (and so do they), but they’re paying twice as much for the same trial that they would have had in the pre-virtual days? And they’re taking twice as much time off of work, maybe paying for twice as much babysitting as they would be, they’ve likely been trying to resolve this legal issue for several years already, and this is just yet another way that the justice system is taking frustratingly more time than they think it should.
WORKSPACE
Depending on what your workspace was prior to the pandemic, and what an average day at your house looks like, virtual hearings may have had a drastic impact on the way that you practice law, or no impact at all.
A lawyer who used to work entirely from home might find that their house is just way too chaotic, noisy, and overwhelming to conduct a trial from. This lawyer might now go out and rent some office space in order to be able to continue doing their job. This office rent is an added expense that they wouldn’t have had if trials were still in person.
A lawyer who previously rented office space close to the court house, and is lucky enough to have a quiet room in their home suitable for attending online court hearings from might give up that rented office space. They’re saving money because court is online.
What about offices that were embracing the open office concept? Open workspaces are known to facilitate a collaborative work environment, level the playing field, and be a more efficient use of space. But, if you’ve designed space for 40 lawyers to work from, with only 4 private rooms which these lawyers can schedule for use, suddenly, online court creates a multitude of scheduling conflicts that weren’t there previously. If courts remain virtual (even just sometimes) after the pandemic restrictions are lifted, this office will need to create more private, quiet spaces for lawyers to attend court from. Converting their open office space to accommodate this need will cost money, and will likely require more space than they previously rented.
A final expense associated with workspaces in the online-court era is reliable internet. While the wifi that a lawyer paid for at home previously might have been good enough for what they used it for at home, the massive bandwidth required for online court might require that the lawyer upgrade their wifi package. Especially if they had a data cap on their old wifi. If they want to be really sure that they’re doing everything they can to avoid the dreaded technical difficulties associated with laggy internet, they’ll probably want to wire the connection right into their computer. This could require them to spend even more money – I’d need to buy an adapter for my laptop, a really really long ethernet cable, and either drill a hole in my living room wall, or move my living room to the bedroom and the bedroom to the living room. And, I live in an urban centre that is lucky enough to have access to very high speed internet. There are areas of the province that still use dial up – how is a lawyer who lives in one of these areas supposed to ensure that they have adequate internet? Drive an hour an a half to an office space that they’re renting just because its three towns over and that town has better-than-dial-up internet?
Without a doubt, online court has shifted the business of practicing law – for some lawyers that was a good shift, and for some it was bad. Likely for most, it was somewhere in the middle. For a profession that is notoriously resistant to change, a pandemic and full court shut down is what it took for us to be able to turn our minds to whether there is a better way to do things. And the answer it seems, as usual, is that it depends.