The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett, has said in a House of Lords constitution committee that there would be no going back to pre-COVID-19 use of technology in courts. He also added that if the crisis goes on it may be worth considering lowering the number of jurors to 7.
In his answer to a question from Lord Pannick as to whether the way lawyers worked would fundamentally change, Lord Burnett said he suspected that it would. He also suggested that Professor Richard Susskind was right to suggest that the crisis represented a turning point in legal practice.
Susskind himself has recently worked with the Society for Computers and Law (SCL), the UK LawTech Delivery Panel, and Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service to launch Remote Courts Worldwide – which has suggested that over 40 countries worldwide are looking at the prospect of remote courts.
More details on Lord Burnetts comments at Legal Futures, and also see the New Zealand Law Society’s view on some of the first virtual trials coming out of the UK.