Good Easter Sunday morning. You won't get this from your political leaders, but as the virus curve flattens and infections and hospitalizations are appearing to peak, we are reminded of the quote of the greatest leader of the 20th Century:
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning."
Winston Spencer Churchill, November 10, 1942, House of Commons Speech on the English Victory over Germany at El Alamein, Egypt.
We are often asked if things will return to normal and when. The answer is "No" and "never". This is permanent change, and that is not a bad thing. For example, the ridiculous habit of shaking hands upon meeting is now gone. Good riddance.
The Virus is a Black-Swann event which will eventually drag this country, kicking and screaming, into positive change. We will spend more on Health Care. We now understand that Health-Defense is as important, perhaps more important, than new military spending. We need larger stockpiles of ventilators and vaccines and antibiotics and ICU Beds, and less stockpiles of bullets and bombs. We need to train more doctors and nurses, and less bomber pilots. There should be a military-health service, where there are two divisions of health care workers trained to parachute into areas of need- like NYC, Boston and Michigan, currently. We need a systemic plan to move health care workers and supplies, like a military invasion, into areas of need.
We need to reexamine government's role in a capitalist economic system when the system collapses. By necessity Government needs to have a bigger role as a partner when corporations fail and people need support. And by support we mean a weekly/monthly distributions of food, money and health services to help Americans in these troubled times.
And we need to understand that Change is the price of survival.
Imagine you owned a Typewriter sales and service store in 1970. In 1971 the NY Times reported that "word processing" was the "buzzword" for the year among businesses. In 1976 the Wang Corporation transitioned a word processor to a CRT screen. Wordstar was introduced in 1978, WordPerfect in 1979, and the death knell for typewriters was sounded.
Should the world have delayed business productivity to save a small industry? Of course not.
Now is the time for us to reexamine other industries that may face a similar fate to the typewriter. Chief among them may well be the lawyer who makes her living appearing in court everyday. What we now know is that is not as necessary as it used to be. By allowing clients to telecommute to court, we save the expenditure of fossil fuels in driving to court, and we allow the client to stay at work. In the traffic and misdemeanor and small claims civil arena, less people will need to hire lawyers to represent them just to save having to take off work and go to court. Court reporters will face a changing environment, as the electronic recording of court proceedings moves to the cloud.
The Law, like other industries such as health care, sports, travel and entertainment, gyms and education, is about to undergo radical change.
Are you ready?
Go have a couple of chocolate Easter Eggs and ponder the future. We give you permission to break your diet today.
HR.
"Chief among them may well be the lawyer who makes her living appearing in court everyday."
ReplyDeleteHow many lawyers you know actually do this? Even the die-hard litigators and trial lawyers have to be office lawyers some of the time. Or home lawyers if they can't afford to rent an office.
"Court reporters will face a changing environment, as the electronic recording of court proceedings moves to the cloud."
If electronic recording of proceedings becomes standard, as it should, court reporters won't have to travel to hearings and in-person depositions (and won't be able to charge appearance fees). Their only task is going to be transcribing recordings, which is what lots of them are already doing. They can rely on that until speech recognition software advances further.