Fantastic piece by Ian Hu who has no time for Luddite lawyers and recalcitrant regulators, legal bodies & organisations.
Here’s the intro to his piece. We highly recommend reading the full article
IT WAS INEVITABLE: as the courts shut down and the work-from-home edict spread, I was reminded of Luddite lawyers sitting in their offices. It would be a gargantuan undertaking to take files to and fro between home and office, and impossible to convert to a paperless office in the blink of an eye. Not surprisingly discoveries and mediations were cancelled, revealing those behind the curve. What we have preached as best practice for decades is now the only practice: paperless remote work is the one game in town.
Speaking of behind the curve, the conservative-to-a-fault Law Society of Ontario relaxed its requirement for in-person verification of client identities, to cheer and derision. Cheer – the right decision. Derision – what took so long? Lawyers on the ground have long been verifying clients with the likes of Skype and FaceTime and WhatsApp, despite the arcane Rules of Professional Conduct, reacting to the needs of the present and not the rules of the past. As the gravity of expectations in today’s society is set by the mobile phone, where a swipe of a screen can achieve a result, lawyers have failed to fall into line and the law society has failed to encourage the profession. But one cannot escape the grasp of the inevitable, which seemed 10 years away and is now here. Those who have already adapted must ask: when will the regulator wake up from its 1800s slumber?
Full article at. http://www.slaw.ca/2020/04/07/lawyering-in-a-time-of-corona/