I’d like to talk a little bit today about virtual trials versus in person trials for impaired driving. During COVID, what happened was that the court went to virtual trials for a time period. And that’s still available now for impaired driving cases we can still do virtual trials or have an in person trial we’re back to into those as well. So there was a great debate when this first started, you know, what are the costs and benefits is one better than the other? And, you know, it remains to be seen, because at the start of this a couple of years ago, who knows, because it was a lot of resistance to doing, you know, a zoom trial where the witnesses are being examined by zoom and I did a podcast with our office manager. We had a really good time doing this podcast sometime ago. And talking about the pros and cons and benefits. And I took one side of it saying it’s a good thing, these virtual trials and she took the other and it’s some of the things that a lot of people think, well, you lose something because you’re not there in the heat of the moment being able to cross examine the person and seeing them sweat or the police officer. And what we found actually is that for impaired driving cases, Zoom trials are as effective as a person trials that’s been our office experience. All our lawyers have done many zoom trials since. Ultimately, it’s up to the client if what they want to opt for but we’ve really found no difference. In fact, there’s arguments that a Zoom trial may be better because the judge in a trial, they’re often looking at their notes and they don’t really see the witness that well whose right off to their left so they’re not seeing if they’re sweating, or reacting or things like that. But in the Zoom trial, their faces right in the screen right in front of the Judge. So we found a good benefit to it. It appears that Zoom trials may be here to stay and you could opt for one or the other. So ultimately, when a client comes to us, we give them the choice we go over the pros and cons and leave it up to them but I have found personally and our lawyers and all the lawyers who I talk to my colleagues who do impaired driving trials, that there’s really no different difference. And there may even be an argument as I stated that it’s better because the judge gets to see the witness much better. Right? It’s right in the judges face so to speak. So that’s the short answer about that there’s a bit of a new virtual reality in the Ontario court system and I think it’s a good thing and then particularly with impaired driving cases, it’s quite effective to do virtual trials by Zoom.
