Sitting in Associate Judge Joel Berg’s courtroom yesterday morning listening to tax protest cases (more about that later), one sentence from his mouth mightily impressed me.
(Well, more than one because he was clearly prepared for the cases.)
Near the end of the presentation of the arguments over the Riley Grade School District 18 case, he told the attorneys that he intended to continue with Zoom appearances even after Covid-19 was no longer a problem.
The pandemic has given McHenry County judges, led by Chief Judge James Cowlin, the opportunity to move into the 21st Century.
Last year and years before, I sat through what seemed to be wastes of Judges’ and lawyers’ time determining when status and other hearings would be held.
The process seemed to be a clerical function. Perhaps even a computer program could accomplish the task.
Attorneys can now appear electronically.
Now, even people don’t have to take off a day of work to settle up with traffic court.
They can use Zoom instead.
I’m just looking at the judicial process from the outside, but it seems to be getting more and more efficient.
And, that can’t be bad.
This pandemic has, and will continue to show us new ways of doing things that perhaps we wouldn’t have considered before.
Gone are the days of, “well, that’s how we’ve always done it.”
A lot of this kind of interaction would be more efficient for the penitents, whether savings of their own time, or that of billable attorney and court fees.
Video conference on scheduling and appearances should save clients billable milliseconds 😬, and the Court it’s own time, but Judges probably still need their personal appearance.
It’s one thing to schedule with the Clerk, but quite another to come to agreement and understanding on Record with the Judge, as only they have that authority.
✌️😎
It is a moral obscenity how attorneys (with cooperation of judges) have abused clients by misuse of continuances.
Thank you Judge Berg for introducing some impediment to industry practice of ” deny, delay, and bury ’em in legal fees”.
Do they make you “rise” on Zoom??
Maybe we could just do without Courts.
The Constitution was trashed long ago.
Seems to be a responsible fellow, not one of the late Al Jourdan’s caddies.