Most judges were very keen to work whatever system will allow for more hearings to take place, he said.However, he said, even with cases that did not involve witness evidence, remote hearings were not ideal.
“Quite often you want to see how a submission is going down, what the reaction of the other side is to it. So you miss all of those.”“In a courtroom you can just look down and see the reactions that everyone is having, and sometimes the reactions are quite important to the evidence being given by somebody on the other side, and you might want to ask them about that when they get into the witness box. You won’t have seen any of that if it is on video.
He noted that in a recent ruling in the English courts, the president of the family law division of the High Court, Sir Andrew McFarlane, said that just because a hearing can be held remotely, does not mean it should be.