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Will COVID change legal systems permanently?

13 June 2024 / Author(s): Philip Wood CBE, KC (Hon)
Issue: April 2021 / Categories: Spotlight

This Spotlight article discusses the long-term impact of COVID on world legal systems, in particular whether COVID will crystallise legal upheavals around the world and whether it will cast a grim shadow over the law or a redeeming glow. I am mainly concerned with financial, corporate and commercial law. My enquiry relates to the post-COVID world, not emergency legislation during COVID. I deal with actual changes to the law, not how it is practised. Thus, I do not aim to cover the documentation of deals, or shifts in market practice, or the future of remote working, or the availability and cost of credit. My focus is on large-scale permanent changes to legal systems themselves, which in turn excludes emergency legislation.

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