You know, if courts could move to virtual proceedings in less than a month in response to a disaster, we could probably have spent the past decade letting people take half an hour off work instead of the whole day to announce "not guilty."

And if lawyers could virtually attend all the non-substantive things that courts clutter their dockets with--basically everything but motions hearings and trials--we could charge clients in rural areas a lot less to take their cases.

What if the solution to the rural lawyer shortage isn't expecting lawyers to move away from population centers, but expecting courts to make reasonable accommodations to help their citizens get due process?

And how much more cheaply could courts run--how much less could they spend on security, arresting people on bench warrants, forcing employees to wait in long lines to get in-- if we just bypassed 90% of it so that only substantive motions had to be in court?

Basically, courts are soaking up tens of thousands of hours of lawyer time each year doing these things, and it means each lawyer must either serve fewer clients or do less for them.

We could really save our communities a lot of money if we made these reforms permanent.

If courts were a business--if their goal was to maximize service to their customers at the least available cost--they wouldn't do these things.

But courts don't have a profit motive. They have a prestige motive.

And so a lot of things that courts do aren't designed to make things smoother or faster for citizens--they're designed to be just a little bit majestic. Thus, very pretty wood-paneled courtrooms and high benches and mandatory appearances.

But I'm not sure that citizens are looking, so much, for majesty from the courts any more. Primarily, they want reasonably fast, fair hearings. Anything we can do to make that happen should be the primary goal.