As we approach a full year spent contending with the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are wondering about the impact of the virus on different industries. In response, we’ve seen plenty of coverage of restaurants and retail and even healthcare, but there are plenty of sectors that have received less coverage. For example, what’s currently happening in our country’s courtrooms and law offices? While certain issues have undoubtedly continued being adjudicated, including personal injury law services and criminal cases, the pandemic has significantly shifted other patterns.

Lawsuits In The Workplace

At the start of the pandemic, one of the biggest changes we saw on a national scale was the shift to remote work wherever possible. For those who couldn’t work from home, though, every day became uniquely risky, and many employers failed to act with their workers’ best interests in mind. The result was a spike in the number of workplace lawsuits, covering concerns ranging from failure to provide a safe work environment to discrimination, retaliation against whistleblowers, and wage and hour disputes caused by COVID-19 related work changes. 

Decline In Divorces

While there may be a significant number of workplace lawsuits going on at present, there’s another core legal function that’s seen a significant decline: divorces. This may be surprising, given the interpersonal conflict the pandemic has caused, but it makes sense in other ways. Over the past year, both marriage and divorce rates have dropped largely because of inconvenience. Barring serious dangers like domestic violence, couples are contending with the reality that divorce is expensive and involves life transitions that are too hard to make right now.

Of course, the current depression in divorce rates is sure to be short lived, and may actually increase post-pandemic, a trend that was seen in China after their initial national shutdowns. Indeed, as divorce lawyer Rowdy Williams observes, “Divorce lawyers should expect to see a steady flow of clients in the months after the pandemic, especially once the economy begins to rebound.”  People aren’t going to get divorced until they feel they have the financial resources to take care of things properly, and while Williams suggests we aren’t there yet, the spike could be coming soon.

Healthcare Suits

Healthcare providers have played an important role in our national survival throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, working on the frontlines of what has felt like a never-ending war, but they haven’t done it alone. Rather, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers like personal care assistants have operated in conjunction with insurance companies, who have changed numerous policies to accommodate new needs. Still, despite everyone’s hard work and most groups’ best efforts, not everything has gone as planned and the result is that insurers and nursing homes have been on the receiving end of numerous lawsuits.

Perhaps more than any other type of healthcare facility, nursing homes have been charged with a failure to protect their patients and staff, including through a failure to provide appropriate PPE and to test and isolate vulnerable patients. Even as the national death toll climbs above 400,000, more than a quarter of those can be linked to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Families are grieving and they are holding those facilities accountable for these untimely deaths.

We’re unlikely to be able to discern the full patterns underlying COVID-related lawsuits for some time, but already some trends are clear – and current demand, while different, can certainly keep lawyers busy. There are a lot of complaints to contend with at present as every industry deals with unprecedented conditions, but they all exist within the bounds of the law.