In a matter of mere days, as the extent of the COVID-19 public health crisis dawned on American society, the nature of law practice has been fundamentally altered. With social distancing, litigation practices that we have always taken for granted have become off limits. Courthouses have restricted access or closed for all but emergency business. Depositions—and travel to them—violate social distancing strictures. Law offices are empty as lawyers work from their kitchen tables—or wherever we're hiding out in this new age of remote work. As a result, in the past week, the wheels of justice are slowing toward a grinding halt.

What is true for society in general is true for the business of law as well: "We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won't go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will." So writes Gideon Lichfield, editor-in-chief of the MIT Technology Review. What will that mean for the litigation business after this crisis is over?

It has become a truism that the Chinese term for crisis is danger/opportunity. Or, as former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has often been quoted as saying during the post-2008 financial crisis: "Never let a serious crisis go to waste." The massive COVID-19 adjournment compels us all to ask what can we do now in the world of litigation that we couldn't do before this crisis? What are the things that we don't want to go back to normal in the practice of law? Can we use this crisis as an opportunity to get rid of—permanently—some of the inefficient, annoying aspects of litigation?

Court Appearances Should Be Rarer Rather Than the Rule. With courthouses restricting access and closing, it's time for court administrators, judges, clerks and lawyers to reconsider which court appearances are truly necessary—and which court business can be done just as effectively by telephone and video conference.

Last year, I traveled half-way across the country for an initial conference in a case. I missed the flight due to construction traffic at LaGuardia, flew half-way across the country, rented a car, drove into the wee hours to get to the venue, and appeared as required the next morning. At the conference, a massively efficient district court judge walked us through his standing order on pretrial procedures, announced an aggressive series of deadlines, and left us quaking at his pronouncement that under no circumstances would any party be granted an extension of any of the deadlines. We were in his courtroom for 20 minutes. No lawyer said a word.

Sure, commercial litigation is not hardship duty. Because I forgot about the time change, I spent a pleasant hour gazing at the sites from a law firm conference room I arrived at an hour early. I took a great tour of a beautiful, historic ceremonial court room guided by my gracious local counsel. And I had a lovely conversation with a retired pharma executive Lyft-driver who brought me back to the airport while telling me about great restaurants in small cities across the Midwest, sharing old school college basketball memories, and leaving me feeling better about the prospect of someday not running around working at such a clip. I figure this court appearance cost probably $25,000 in fees and expenses. Justice would not have suffered if it had been a 20-minute conference call.

How many times have you witnessed a judge gaze out over her courtroom and comment on how many billable hours were being wasted with phalanxes of lawyers sitting there? And how many times have you wanted to stand up to rebut: so why do you require us all to shlep down here for this?

After COVID-19, the slow evolution in case management that has often replaced calendar calls with scheduled appearances, pushed discovery disputes from litigated motions to teleconferences, and occasionally permitted remote virtual appearances needs to become a revolution. Over the next month or more, as routine appearances are shut down and we hold conferences and motion and appellate arguments by videoconference, let's collectively consider when, where, and whether anything has really been lost in the quality of justice.

Many Face-to-Face Depositions—and Travel for Them—Are Unnecessary. There's no substitute for challenging and assessing a witness in a face-to-face encounter. But not every deposition entails a Perry Mason moment. As social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 descends, depositions are being adjourned left and right. This crisis is an opportunity for lawyers to adapt to videoconferencing depositions—to develop rules and customs for the use of exhibits, securing remote locations for witnesses and court reporters, and reducing the financially- and environmentally-wasteful practice of traveling great distances for routine depositions.

A number of years ago, I took the depositions of a series of retired executives and in-house lawyers regarding a merger. I traveled back and forth from New York and up and down the west coast of Florida for a month or more, deposing a series of grey-haired men in polo shirts with lobster-like complexions. To a man (and they were all white men), they testified that all they knew about this largest transaction in their successful corporate careers—the one that paid them out well and relegated them permanently to golf courses on the Gulf Coast—was that they had discussed it only with their former company's general counsel and no one else. At any time. Period. No amount of my cross-examination could elicit anything other than this blanket invocation of privilege. One morning, when I awoke once again in a hotel that was entirely within the indoor confines of Orlando's airport, the absurdity of the process hit me. It was necessary discovery to prevent any surprise at trial, but there had to be a better way. Little but time, cost and aggravation would have been lost if those depositions had each been a one-hour videoconference.

Technology can be liberating—or it can be complexifying. As virtual depositions become more feasible and comfortable to practitioners, the ease and efficiency must not give way to abuse. E-discovery should certainly be our collective red flag; technology that could have liberated us all from the worst drudgery of document discovery by focusing the process through pinpoint, searchable mechanisms has only immersed us in a seemingly unending and ever-expanding morass of document retrieval and review as over-aggressive lawyering has led to over-extensive requests for massive data pulls that over-extended judges cannot possibly police effectively. Lawyers over 45 hate it. Lawyers under 45 often hate the practice of law because of it. Technology applied without wisdom can be worse than no technology at all. Virtual depositions can be liberating, but we cannot allow their availability to multiply the number of depositions or provide an excuse for harassing witnesses whose depositions aren't really necessary. Over the next month or two, as we all struggle to adapt to virtual depositions, let's collectively think through where and how, to quote former Mayor Ed Koch, "the good old days weren't so good." Some practices should be left in the past.

E-Filing Should Be Mandatory in Every Court and Every Lawsuit. Why do we have courts across America where people have to show up and file papers in person? What was merely annoying last week, has become dangerous this week. The COVID-19 crisis should result in an end to all but e-filing in every court across America.

The technology is no longer an impediment. If it's a matter of the cost of implementation and training for court personnel, that will be a pittance compared to what governments at every level are going to spend in reaction to and recovery from this public health crisis.

As journalist Michael Grunwald documented in his book The New New Deal, the electronic medical records industry was a direct outgrowth of targeted investments made in the post-2008 fiscal stimulus package enacted at the outset of the Obama Administration. Surely there are lawyer-legislators in Washington, D.C. and Albany who can slip an item into the upcoming relief bills to fund any innovations, purchases and training needed to make e-filing mandatory and put an end to the anachronism of hard copy court filings once and for all.

While we're at it, how about we collectively resolve during this viral emergency to never again send a letter headed "Via First Class Mail & Electronic Mail" or any equivalent. Who would do that at this point other than a lawyer anyway? Let's eliminate all the wasteful and redundant paper being mailed, air couriered and hand delivered in and around lawsuits.

Counsel in a case I'm litigating agreed last week that because of the crisis service of all papers will be by email without any hard copies. That should be the norm going forward in any case in which counsel have appeared. Surely as we move into the 2020s, we can in this way bring communications among litigators into the 21st Century.

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This week, next month and beyond, we're in for hard times. Lawyers—and many others too—are going to die from this virus. Courts—like all of our vital institutions—are going to be under great strain. Law firms—like all businesses—are facing unprecedented risks.

We are all going to have to adapt to the new realities. We are all going to learn new ways. Some of those will be helpful. Some should be here to stay. Amidst the pain and suffering, let's keep our eyes open for innovations that we should make permanent.

John Siegal is a Manhattan litigator.