How will Law Practice Change after the Pandemic?

Many people choose to chase a career as a lawyer. Rightfully so, it’s quite prestigious, and it takes real, honest work. It’s hard even to graduate, let alone practice it your whole life.

But with tens of thousands of law students throughout the country never imagining how drastically the pandemic would shift the industry, we all wonder how things will change in the future.

It’s scary. Most of the traditional ways of the litigation process won’t work. Not for attorneys, neither for clients. Long gone are the business attire, face-to-face meetings, and just the mundane things like driving to the court.

The litigation world is slowly, but surely, catching up to the rest of the modern, work from home, online-meeting workstyle. So, how is law practice going to change? What’s the future like for Corona Virus lawyers?

That’s what we’re going over in this article. And things may not be as bad as they sound. After all, litigation has always been slow to adapt.

Litigation firms are finally pushed to evolve with the times, now more and more people work from home.

Have you ever heard about a lawyer who’s working for a big company, but they’re working from home?

Most likely, you haven’t. Big law firms are reluctant to let their professionals work in their PJs. Mostly the reason is that working from home doesn’t allow collaboration between them and colleagues.

But that’s mostly nonsense. Most of the reason is that litigation is an old-school, riddled with traditional practice, that big law firms don’t like to let go and modernize.

Some of the most significant creative agencies do wonders with their teams spread throughout the world. The only thing that would hinder the collaborative process is misinformation. But don’t worry. SaaS businesses have dealt with that long time ago, so tools developed for everything a lawyer may need to work from home.

Video conferencing will play a big role in depositions and meetings with clients.

More and more lawyers will see video conferencing software like Zoom appear in their workdays.

There’s a real possibility to see video depositions become the norm. More and more industries accept video conferencing as the new norm, and law practice will have to adapt.

A reduction in size for in-life depositions and meetings will likely take place.

And with video conferring becoming the new norm, we’ll all most likely see in-life depositions becoming rarer.

Face-to-face interaction will happen more rarely, and people would go to the office to meet only when it’s genuinely needed. This can be an advantage, as it would allow lawyers to proceed faster with cases.

Sooner or later, there will be a revolution in e-services around the world of litigation.

Most law firms would require you to be at the office, connected to their network, to transfer or access files. This is unproductive, and it’s something impossible to be done in the current state of the world.

So, law firms are investing more money to develop encrypted services professionals can use to safely transfer files online without the need to be in the office.

Drastic changes to charging per hour and court procedures will optimize the litigation process.

Overall, lawyers will have fewer expenses to cover. We may actually see a drop in per hour charges, which is excellent for clients.

While this sounds like something lawyers shouldn’t be excited about, it’s not really the case. Overall you’ll spend less time in traffic and commuting between meetings with clients. This frees up time that you can use to work with other clients, eventually making more money and winning more cases.