Lesson Plan: Law after COVID
- How has the legal profession changed during the time of COVID? Have there been any advantages to this? Disadvantages?
- Do you think any of these changes will continue after things return to normal?
Reading
Read this article: https://nysba.org/the-legal-world-will-never-be-the-same-after-covid-19/ Are the things she’s describing similar or different to your experience?
Who or what does the following things:
- finding it difficult to start a career
- Thinks life won’t go quickly back to normal
- have applied for unemployment insurance
- hear arguments by teleconference
- Thinks clients should be able to access their documents form home.
Answer the following questions.
- How has the crisis affected law firms?
- What has the government support been like?
- What are the two routes to a law license in New York?
- What legal work will there be in the future?
Vocabulary
Find a word in the text that means the folowing:
- a job or profession that someone does for a long time
- the act of ending the employment of a worker or group of workers
- A lawyer who argues in a court
- meeting or session at which evidence and arguments about a crime, complaint, etc., are presented to a person or group
- a legal document in which a person states who should receive his or her possessions after he or she dies
- Legal work done free of charge to the client
Listening
Listen to this audio: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08hg5q1 What does Lady Hale think should change in the courts?
List the following subjects in the order you hear them:
- trust
- face coverings
- Jury dynamics
- giving evidence
- Grandness of the courts
- Importance of speaking
Listen again. What has changed during this COVID time? What are the advantages and disadvantage s of this?
Language
Match the two halves of the sentence:
| It has taught us some valuable lessons | taken in writing or remotely |
| Routine case management decisions can be | a conspiracy of the lawyers against the laity. |
| There is a gravitas attached | into a little community. |
| That feels more like a case conference | about what is and is not important. |
| Trials should not be experienced as | to a courtroom hearing. |
| A good jury turns | than a judicial process. |
Discussion
Are any of these concepts relevant in your own legal community?