COVID-19 Legal News Roundup: April 30th Edition

April 30, 2020

By Alan Kilpatrick, Reference Librarian

The COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on the practice of law, is changing rapidly. We want to help you stay up to date with the latest news.

Each week we aggregate the leading legal news headlines on COVID-19 on topics that matter to you: access to justice, the Courts, legal innovation, legal practice, remote working, students & articling, and wellness.   

Access to Justice

• Can a chatbot answer legal questions? | Heather Douglas, Slaw (April 29)
• Sounds good, but what are we missing? | Julie Macfarlane, Representing Yourself Canada (April 30)
• That was then and this is now | Julie Macfarlane & Justice Aki Choudhury, Jumping Off the Ivory Tower (April 30) Podcast

Courts

• Coming out of the stone age | Michael Lesage, The Lawyer’s Daily (April 27)
• Losing ground on the backlog | Dale Smith, CBA National (April 29)
• Our civil justice system needs to be brought Into the 21st century | Rosalie Silberman Abella, The Globe and Mail (April 24)

Legal Innovation

• COVID-19 could catalyze the legal industry renaissance | Nancy Rapoport & Joe Tiano, Above the Law (April 29)
• Learning from “building planes in the sky” | Kari Boyle, Slaw (April 29)
• Pandemic IX: Law firm transformation | Jordan Furlong, Law 21 (April 30)

Legal Practice

• 7 Ways the pandemic will forever change law practice | Bob Ambrogi, Above the Law (April 27)
• How will your marketing evolve after COVID-19? | Attorney at Work (April 30)
• We must act before COVID-19 spells the end of an independent criminal bar | Bill Trudell, Canadian Lawyer (April 28)

Remote Working

• The Great migration: How remote-work has transformed the legal profession | Aidan Macnab, Canadian Lawyer (April 28)
• Ready or not — your legal hearing may now be video conferenced | Anita Balakrishnan, Law Times (April 29) 
• Zoom backgrounds: Looking good in a tiny square! | Bull Garlington, Attorney at Work (April 27)

Students & Articling

• Are we entering a new era of legal education during the novel coronavirus crisis? | Ari Kaplan, ABA Journal (April 24)
• LSO ‘actively’ pursuing online bar exams, live convocation technology |Anita Balakrishnan, Law Times (April 27)
• Please don’t go to law school because of COVID-19 | Jordan Rothman, Above the Law (April 29)

Wellness

• Get organized! Time investments for better legal information habits | Amelia Landenberger, Slaw (April 29)
• Lawyers on Zoom drinking coffee | CBA Ontario (n.d.) Podcast
• My post-COVID hopes for the profession | Darryl Singer, Canadian Lawyer (April 27)