Law in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 1

Suddenly, a lot of things have changed, the practice of law included. How lawyers will respond to this challenge will depend upon their practice area. For example, I typically spend a great deal of my time appearing in District Court: three to five days on the average week. Court hearings are one of the areas most affected by the current situation.

On March 13, North Carolina shut down almost all court for 30 days, from March 16 to April 16. However, some hearings have to be held because of constitutional or statutory guarantees. For example, I have a felony plea scheduled this week because my client is in custody. I have also had a few juvenile delinquency and domestic violence hearings during this shutdown. This not-quite-complete shutdown has prompted me to develop a flexible response.

For the cases that will go forward, I call or email my clients to make sure that they know that their cases are still on for hearing. Generally, hearings are scheduled for a particular day, and everybody shows up and waits their turn. Now, however, hearings are scheduled at specific time slots so that parties and lawyers do not mix in the court rooms. The hearings themselves go forward more or less exactly as they would in normal times.

The cases that have to be rescheduled are a little more involved. I start by calling or emailing my clients to make sure that they know their cases will not be held as previously scheduled. If I already have a new court date, then I also inform them of that. If I do not have a new court date, then what I tell them next depends upon what kind of case they have.

For many types of cases, my clients should receive printed notices in the mail. The clerk of court should mail notices for criminal and child abuse cases. The Department of Social Services should mail notices for child support cases. (For civil cases, the attorneys are responsible for recalendering hearings and noticing the opposite attorney.) However, people move and mail gets lost, so I am not relying solely on that method for ascertaining new court dates. For criminal cases, I have been telling my clients how they can sign up for text and email notifications from nccourts.gov. I have also been using nccourts.gov myself to get notified of the new court dates.

Developing a protocol to keep track of over 30 rescheduled court dates and to keep clients informed has been the most challenging part of this situation to date.

Finally, before I put away each client's file, I ask myself: Can I do anything else to move this case forward? With court hearings off the table, other possible solutions present themselves. I have negotiated new criminal pleas since it appears that grand juries will not meet until May or June. Consent orders in civil cases start to look more attractive in comparison to delaying hearings until the latter half of the year.

There is more to the practice of law than court hearings, of course, and I will address these additional aspects in further articles.