Changes in the Law Practice After COVID-19 … What Will Be the New Normal? - The Legal Intelligencer

Michael Engle, shareholder and chair of the firm's White Collar Defense, Compliance & Investigations practice group, is quoted in The Legal Intelligencer article, "Changes in the Law Practice After COVID-19 … What Will Be the New Normal?"

Michael Engle, chair of the white collar defense group of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, said, "The COVID-19 pandemic will create long-lasting changes in the practice of law. Work-related travel for internal investigations and meeting with clients will be significantly curtailed, as firms realize that technology may be a cost-efficient substitute to travel. Perhaps it will become economically desirable for law firms to reduce overhead by downsizing physical office spaces."

Michael Engle, an experience criminal trial lawyer, said, "Many of the innovations regarding remote meetings and hearings will diminish our effectiveness as lawyers and our ability to best serve our clients." It is this writer's opinion, a lawyer's personal skill in determining the actual factual circumstance he is dealing with, described by the courts as attorney opinion work product, must be preserved. Interviewing potential witnesses is a prime example. Good lawyers and investigators must see and hear a person to determine if the he is being truthful. More than one time the writer of this column has interviewed a possible witness and concluded he was "holding back."