The 2020 (and continuing) pandemic has produced a long-overdue, and necessary change. I speak of a change in how legal work is performed and legal services are delivered. Better communication, law to consumer, is coming. More efficiency in the practice of law should yield costs savings to clients. An article found on Twitter encapsulates these thoughts,
When the world (and particularly courts) is reopened the tide will swing against video conferences and remote hearings, depositions, mediations, etc. This will only be temporary. By the end of 2021, we will begin seeing the positive impacts of the 2020 tidal wave of technology adoption in how court procedures and other legal events take place. The lessons learned this year will open the door for distributed, asynchronous legal proceedings and if done right, the positive impact on access to justice will be greater than anything we have seen before. Many legal consumers who had been barred from justice due to financial, physical, intellectual, or even emotional barriers need not be barred in the future.
Legal Technology Trends to Watch in 2021 | Clio, Article by Jordan Couch, Partner at Palace Law, @jordanlcouch
I concur with Mr. Couch that the end of the pandemic — whenever that may be — will not be the end of this trend. Far too much investment has been made, and too much real progress with it, to simply turn the back and return to normal. Will there ever be a ‘normal as we knew it? I think not.
We must adapt to the new normal. However, we don’t yet know what that is. It’s a work in progress and to a great extent, a dream. The new normal I live in today is, I know, fleeting and I must be running every day to catch up to its incessant evolution. It’s like the girlfriend in junior high you did not know you wanted.
In my own headlong rush to find/define a new normal I drastically modified my mediation practice. For the foreseeable future I will mediate only online. I closed my physical office that I had not occupied since very early March of 2020. Although I was already a heavy user of technology, my own launch further into technology as a tool included adding #Clio and #Legalboards along with #calendly. I had a subscription to #Zoom right after it launched but had used it only a few times. Now 50+ #Zoom #mediations later I think I use it pretty well. Space on the home desk was found for two external monitors, a ring-light and external web cam, and a boom-mic headset that perches atop a charging stand. The labyrinth of wires is totally out of control. Some of that was written about previously.
Of necessity, I expanded my social presence by beefing up my #Facebook posts, adding a #Twitter account and even an #Instagram account. Prompted by some ideas during one of the dozens of professional webinars I watched, I registered about 10 internet domains with an online mediation nature and pointed all of them to this, my main website.
How is your new-normal coming along? What have you done. Drop a note in the comments.
Credit to Forbes for the image.
