We’re going Paperlite!
Our hub at Highfields House is closed for the moment. We’ve made the transition to working remotely – it may have been forced upon us but we’ve done it! Conferences online; hearings by phone or with Teams; meetings by Zoom.
Inevitably, all this new working makes one think about the future. Can some of these changes be used when we are back to normal? Well, yes. The most obvious is radically reducing our Paper usage – out with the quill pen and in with the digital stylus!
The arguments couldn’t be clearer: lower costs, much better for the planet and fewer prolapsed discs dragging lever arch files down New London Road. We should have done it before. Oh yes.
Many of us were there or thereabouts Before Covid (now known as BC, of course). I had a long trial last summer which I managed digitally for the first time, using PDF Expert and the shared screen option on my Mac. My smugness at not having to lug all those files around would have been unbearable and I’m sorry. No shuffling through the papers to find the right page. I even found myself giving mini tutorials to other esteemed members of the Bar. Me! A computer expert!
But remote working means that it has become impossible to have paper now. So, we have decided as a Chambers to get everyone paper lite. As with any group of disparate individuals we range from those who last handled a piece of paper when Justin Bieber was still pubertal to those keen to move on but for whom life had perhaps more meaningful priorities.
Well, it’s become radically more important now.
We have split ourselves into groups and are sharing experiences and mutually self educating on regular Zoom sessions. It’s really, really working! We’re all conscious that this is the way things had to move anyhow and Covid has had the effect of speeding up the process. But we’re enjoying learning, picking up tips from each other and all of us hope very much that once we are all back to some sort of normality, the days of pigeon holes groaning with piles of paper will be something for the BC history books.
Janet Bettle
Trinity Chambers
11th May 2020
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