Staying Together While Working Apart – There is a great deal that newly remote teams can learn from teams that have worked remotely for several years. Nancy Dixon’s recommendations on how to stay connected is a resource for managers, staff and teams, and focuses on social and professional aspects of maintaining effective and positive work product now and into the future
Virtual Conferences: A Guide to Best Practices – A community resource from the ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] Presidential Task Force on What Conferences Can Do to Replace Face-to-Face Meetings Version 1.1 — April 13, 2020
“As the coronavirus pandemic spreads and courts around the world are closing, this website (Remote Courts Worldwide) is designed to help the global community of justice workers – judges, lawyers, court officials, litigants, court technologists – to share their experiences of ‘remote’ alternatives to traditional court hearings. To ensure ongoing access to justice, governments and judiciaries are rapidly introducing various forms of ‘remote court’ – audio hearings (largely by telephone), video hearings (for example, by Skype and Zoom), and paper hearings (decisions delivered on the basis of paper submissions). At remarkable speed, new methods and techniques are being developed. However, there is a danger that the wheel is being reinvented and that there is unnecessary duplication of effort across the world. In response, this site offers a systematic way of remote-court innovators and people who work in the justice system to exchange news of operational systems, as well as of plans, ideas, policies, protocols, techniques, and safeguards. By using this site, justice workers can learn from one another’s successes and disappointments. Please do contribute. The idea is that this site is a repository to which users regularly send their news. The structure and scope of the site will evolve over time, as we come to have a better understanding of what is most useful. Feedback would be warmly welcome.
The service is a joint effort – hosted by the Society for Computers and Law, funded by the UK LawTech Delivery Panel, and supported by Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service. It also builds on the community that was established at the First International Forum on Online Courts, held in London in December 2018, when 300 people from 26 countries came together to talk about using technology to transform the work of courts. None of us imagined then that we would need to change so quickly. But we must seize the moment and come together to accelerate the development of new ways of continuing to deliver just outcomes for court users…”
People financially affected by COVID-19 outbreak are experiencing more psychological distress than others
Health experts are concerned about the potential mental health effects of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, and mental health hotlines report a substantial uptick in calls since the outbreak began. Nearly one-in-five U.S. adults (18%) say they have had a physical reaction at least some or a little of the time when thinking about the outbreak, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted March 19-24. This is particularly true of those affected financially. When asked more broadly how they’ve felt in the past seven days, not in the context of the coronavirus outbreak, 18% report experiencing nervousness or anxiety most or all of the time during the past week. For context, a 2018 federal survey – which was not taken in the midst of a national crisis – found 9% of U.S. adults reported feeling nervous most or all of time over the past 30 days, indicating that the current level might be above normal…”