Navigate Litigation 2.0

Every litigator should be able to give a positive answer to the following question: “Did I do everything reasonably possible to protect my clients against the loss of information they entrusted to me?” Although most attorneys would find the question well-timed and entirely legitimate, the unfortunate reality is that many law firms are not taking…

Yogi Berra, a data science pioneer and Hall of Fame manager for the New York Yankees, once declared, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” How true. It’s in that same spirit we take a look at our 2020 output to see what, if anything, can be asserted about the state of the legal…

Jury trials are among the last pieces of the judicial system to undergo a virtual transformation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although some aspects of jury trials will never be replicated online — for example, the bonding process that jurors experience after spending days or weeks together — courts across the country have…

Litigation moved online in a big way in 2020, demanding that attorneys learn new advocacy skills and shed tried-and-true courtroom habits that do not work well in virtual courtrooms, remote depositions, and other online environments. For example, the act of looking at the audience — an instinctive and powerful technique for in-person presenters — can…

Virtual trials are different from in-person trials. They demand technology that is unfamiliar to many and a new approach to trial advocacy, where the litigator’s voice and physical presence have been replaced by a video transmission that is, in many cases, substantially outside of the litigator’s control. Some attorneys are mastering this new litigation environment,…

The legal community’s forced apprenticeship with remote technology during the COVID-19 pandemic changed, almost overnight, how litigation is conducted in the United States. From mundane interactions like client meetings to courtroom hearings with constitutional significance like arraignments and trials, courts and lawyers have replaced in-person processes with technology-enabled, socially distant substitutes wherever feasible and lawful.…