Over the summer Appleyard Lees conducted three trials in the
Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court, which were held
remotely following the restrictions on movement in the UK imposed
by the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England)
Regulations 2020.
This article explains how court proceedings in England and Wales
can be conducted digitally and considers how the pandemic may
result in permanent changes to working practices in IP litigation
going forwards.
Home working and clients
In practice many law firms are particularly well suited to
conducting business via home working. A solicitor or attorney's
work is principally conducted by correspondence and the vast
majority of legal correspondence is sent by email. Many firms
already work on a paper-light or paper-free basis with incoming
post scanned and stored electronically. Case management
systems are held on secure private servers which can only be
accessed by password-protected computers
