How Will We Conduct Jury Trials In the Age of COVID-19?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] At varying speeds, courts across the country are starting to reactivate trial calendars. This process is substantially easier for bench trials, and a number of them have already been conducted by video. The first one handled by Zoom, a five-week patent infringement trial in the Eastern District of Virginia, proceeded with few hitches. Both...
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Revising Our Assumptions About People — A Review of “Talking to Strangers”

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]“Talking to Strangers” is a social psychology study of how we make the wrong assumptions about people. Its principal caution is that “strangers are not easy.” Citing studies that show quick we are to make snap judgments about others , using rules that we would not apply to ourselves, Gladwell walks through three major...
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When Does A Video Feed Make Sense for Trial or Evidentiary Hearing?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]While the use of live video testimony in court and especially arbitration is not new, its new frequency in venues across the globe will be. I spoke this morning with a colleague practicing law in Costa Rica, who mentioned a video testimony procedure being used at one of their arbitration centers. Witnesses are present...
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Timing in Trial Can Be Everything: Lessons from the Jefferson Davis Prosecution

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I just finished reading Cynthia Nicoletti’s “Secession on Trial,” a meticulously researched account of how the United States attempted to convict Confederate ex-president Jefferson Davis for treason. Arrested in May 1865, he was indicted in 1866, but no trial ever occurred. After years of being subject to maneuvering and postponement...
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