Introduction

Today, the world is facing a global pandemic, its worst nightmare, a bitter reality! All of a sudden the world has come to a standstill. Covid-19 has not only an impact on the health of the people but it also has been adversely affecting the over-al lives of people, especially the common man. We all have known it well since past year that how Covid took away the lives of billions of people. It affected the economic conditions, educational industry, employment, trade and business, tourism, pilgrimage, transport system, industrial units and basically “normal life” all around the globe. 

We all know how Covid affected the employment sectors in India. Pandemic has severely impacted the employment figures in India since early 2020. Especially the state of lockdown brought a dreadful condition of unemployment, and it negatively impacted all the sectors that helped in contributing towards the employment generations. In the same way it adversely effected the legal world. 

Covid and Legal Industry

Coronavirus has impacted the Indian legal industry like never before. The global Covid outbreak has resulted to destabilization of the legal profession. The courtrooms, the law firms, the legal departments and offices and the law schools have been severely impacted and disturbed. With the social-distancing obligations and lockdown orders, the Indian Judicial system and legal houses have had to close their doors to general public. Hence access to justice got limited due to the closure of courts. All legal processes came to a hold as the battle of Covid-19 with India kept worsening day by day.

Effect of Covid-19 on Legal Industry

1. Pandemic has majorly impacted the Indian courtrooms. In order to adhere to the social distancing norms, the Indian courts have resorted to Virtual Court Rooms. As many common people are unknown to the use of internet, they find it difficult to attend the virtual courtroom sessions and usually end up disturbing the complete session.
2. Most of the judicial officers & staff members of various courts have been hit by the spread of covid-19. Due to the decrease in working staff, speedy & timely completion of judicial matters has become impossible. The Indian courts are as of now hearing extremely urgent matters only which were filed in the year 2021 and other cases have been rescheduled.
3. Due to pandemic many criminal courts in India have granted interim bail to under trials due to congested prisons.
4. Keeping in mind the difficulties & problems due to the covid-19, the Supreme Court has extended statutory timelines in all proceedings, & is applicable to all courts & tribunals in India.
5. The pandemic has also distributed the liquidation process, alternate dispute resolution mechanism, mediations & arbitrations, etc.
6. The covid outbreak has also transformed the way law schools impart education. The law schools have suspended the offline learning process & moved to online teaching methods. Due to delay in admission processes, the professors appointed have been rushing to complete the syllabus & tend to skip many topics which are to be taught. Lectures are been conducted only with an exam point of view and limited topics are been discussed. 1^st year law students are finding it difficult to cope up with the syllabus & understand the topics clearly.
7. Law firms are also enforced to adopt work from home policies. All the corporate law works are done online. The pandemic has kept lawyers & law firms engaged in advising & assisting clients on force majeure provisions & termination of contracts.

Positive Outlook

1. The Indian legal system is starting to embrace & accept the technological advances.
2. Even in this global pandemic the Indian legal system has implemented our ancient custom justice, at all cost always.
3. The legal industry is becoming dependent on IT enabled virtual systems is communication facilities.
4. The virtual technology in the Indian legal system is flourishing.
5. Media is given a special facility which leads them to report almost all cases & their outcomes.
6. Each & everyone connected to this profession is getting to experience the digital era.
7. Students are getting an opportunity to experience digital learning. They get to attend the online webinars & seminars conducted by successful & knowledgeable legal professionals. Students are also getting a chance to attempt for online internships.

Conclusion

The present covid outbreak situation is unpredictable. It is difficult to analyze when the world will get back to the pre-covid normal conditions. This pandemic has adversely impacted the legal industry of our nation. There have been many negative effects of this deadly disease, but it also brought along some positive points too. Undoubtedly the negative affects are enumerable, but the world is trying to adopt digitalization and perform social distancing due to it as we think about good & aspects. Yes, it will obviously take time for the world to get back to its normal pre-covid times, but we all have to accept the harsh reality and try to accept the new normal as of now.

And it is best for all of us to observe social distancing, take precautions & look after the health of our loved ones! Stay safe, Stay Healthy!

Aishwarya Says:

I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.

If you are interested in participating in the same, do let me know.

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