During the state of the judiciary annual address at the meeting of the Missouri Bar and the Judicial Conference in Kansas City last week, Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary R. Russell celebrated the advent of remote technologies while lamenting their downsides.
“The learning curve may have been steep, but as a profession, we cleared the hurdles and embraced those changes, and our practices and proceedings are better for it,” she said.
The Missouri Bar began offering Continuing Legal Education credits remotely, which makes it easier for the judiciary to keep up with new developments in the practice of law while saving time.
Hohn
| Thompson Coburn Law Firm
“The use of technologies like Zoom, Teams and all of those platforms have been incredibly helpful for a number of different aspects of our practice,” said Chris Hohn, an attorney at Thompson Coburn law firm.
Hohn was recently elected chair of the litigation department at the St. Louis law firm, effective in August 2024.
“For CLEs, it has been exceptionally efficient to use those technologies to really bring everybody together and have internal CLEs for our attorneys," he said. "The tools that we learned how to use more effectively during the pandemic have continued to pay dividends in inefficiencies and investment in our team as we move forward.”
In addition to the convenience and efficiency of remote technologies, Russell harped on their downsides.
“The camaraderie of lawyers seeing each other at CLEs or in the courthouse, such as on law days, is lost,” she said.
Russell urged attorneys not to allow the loss to compromise civility.
“Now, more than ever, it is important for us all to treat one another with kindness and respect," she said.
Other shifts in the industry that Russell noted during her presentation were remote public access to court records initiated by the Missouri Court Automation Committee and a decline in the number of civil jury trials.
“Records of all courts are presumed to be open to the public, and attorneys always have had a legal obligation to redact confidential information from their public court filings,” Russell added. “But, as the years passed, the expectation became that “public” should mean “available online” for anyone, not just licensed attorneys or court employees.”
Since the year 2000, the number of civil jury trials in Missouri has dropped by 76 percent, according to Missouri court data.
Hohn confirmed the downward trend but said there has been an increase in filings both in state and federal courts in Missouri.
“While it is true the number of civil jury trials has declined, the need for excellent trial lawyers really has not,” he added. “I think there is always going to be a high demand for firms and lawyers who know how to try cases like Thompson Coburn does. We still do have a contingent of trial lawyers here at Thompson Coburn that are in trial all the time.”