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This Covid lockdown has led to some interesting accommodations. Federal Courts in my district at least have been physically closed for civil proceedings since last March. At first, they did hybrid telephone/internet hearings, but that was too awkward for anything other than simple motions. Now the courts use Zoom.gov instead.

I have already done a two-day trial in Federal Court via Zoom, and it required a bit of a different skill set than in-person trial work. You learn, for instance, how important camera angles and lighting are. Get them wrong, and you’ll look like Count Diracula or the corpse he invited for lunch. I learned also that no matter how neat your office really is, it always looks like a cluttered mess on Zoom. Subpoenaing witnesses who have to appear by Zoom is both more difficult and easier. It requires at lot of planning and preparation. Working with exhibits, which are submitted and distributed beforehand electronically, turned out to be far easier than I expected. Anyway, the advantages seem to outweigh the disadvantages, so I expect this is here to stay in some form to another.