Lawyers in Lockdown 3: Thinking about the client experience of the remote hearings

The lockdown period seems to be gradually easing now but I for one do not believe that remote hearings will end after this. That said remote hearings shouldn’t and can’t continue to be the norm forever; my first blog addressed the importance of face-to-face contact in family proceedings and I still believe that that is the way it should always be. In this time though we have learnt that remote hearings are possible can work smoothly and should be available where necessary. I am not willing to accept that these hearings are merely ‘stop gaps’ for now – there is some use for them in the future. That means we need to make sure that in this period we as practitioners can help refine the process to be as comfortable engaging and accessible for clients as we can should we ever need it again.

My focus today is what information we can glean from the lay parties’ experience of these hearing. I mentioned in my last blog post that I was increasingly concerned about what the client experience was of remote hearings. This lead me to...

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