Singer Kwinter’s Shane Katz on how virtual-first is reshaping costs, clients and courts
When the pandemic emptied Ontario courtrooms, video calls and electronic filing were introduced as stopgap measures to keep the civil justice system limping along. Fast‑forward to today and mask mandates may be a thing of the past, but there’s no going back on those “temporary” fixes. They’re being written into how the profession works, from tighter virtual ID‑verification requirements to a $166‑million Courts Digital Transformation program that is rolling out an end‑to‑end digital justice platform.
For plaintiff‑side boutiques like Toronto’s Singer Kwinter, this is less revolution than formal recognition of how work already gets done. Senior lawyer Shane Katz estimates that about 98 per cent of the time, litigation proceedings outside of trials are carried out through Zoom by default, and almost all his clients prefer the virtual world.
“It’s way more convenient for injured people — they don’t have to find their way around the city to get to these proceedings — and it’s cheaper for everybody involved,” Katz says, adding that in his view one of the main reasons the arrangement has endured post‑COVID is because it saves insurers money.
“There hasn’t been a push by the defence bar to go back to in‑person. The odd file, I’ll get a lawyer insisting on a discovery or a mediation in person, but it’s extremely rare; less than 5 per cent for sure.”
An unchanged client‑centred approach
That flexibility co‑exists with tighter regulatory expectations. During the pandemic, the Law Society of Ontario temporarily allowed licensees to verify identity by looking at their ID over video. That emergency measure expired at the end of 2023. As of January 1, 2024, if lawyers verify identity via video, they must use a process that authenticates the government‑issued photo ID itself. The Federation of Law Societies followed a similar path, extending a pandemic exemption only until early 2024 before expecting either in‑person checks or compliant authentication technology.
From a client‑service perspective, those changes simply codify Singer Kwinter’s long‑standing mandate to meet people where they are. Some clients want to come into the office; others want the lawyer to visit them at home; many are happiest to stay on screen. The firm treats it as another dimension of client‑centred practice and works with each person on an individual basis.
While virtual proceedings could become an access‑to‑justice concern if a client lacks the right equipment or technological know‑how, “that’s easily mitigated by their representation,” Katz says. Counsel can bridge that gap by hosting clients in their offices; and for court appearances, in‑person options remain.
“I can get to know a client, get the information I need, and properly represent a client without meeting them in person,” he explains. “But equally, if they want face‑to‑face interaction, I have no issue with that.”
Courts program puts Ontario at digital forefront
On the court‑operations side, modernization is finally catching up to practice. While trials themselves remain in person by default, Ontario’s Courts Digital Transformation program is replacing a patchwork of legacy systems, aiming to support e‑filing, case management, scheduling, document management, hearing management and electronic decisions across the Superior Court of Justice and Ontario Court of Justice.
An Interim Solution for File Storage is already digitizing court records and giving staff and judges immediate digital access to court documents while laying the foundation for migration into the new system.
Phase 1 is now live in the Toronto region, where family and civil matters — including Small Claims, Divisional Court, Commercial List and contested estates — run through the Ontario Courts Public Portal, with criminal matters slated to follow in 2027 and a region‑by‑region rollout across the rest of the province after that. The initiative positions Ontario as one of the leading jurisdictions in Canada’s digital‑justice shift.
It’s hard to argue with the benefits of electronic filing, Katz notes, from saving trees to lowering costs and easing backlogs. With today’s technology, there’s no practical difference for him between a hard copy and an electronic version of a document.
“The court system was always severely lagging in terms of modernizing its procedures, and COVID forced its hand,” he says. “The changes were born of necessity at the time, but it just makes more sense from all perspectives — they can’t go back at this point.”
Advocacy adapts as virtual-first takes hold
The most contested ground is advocacy technique. While the default for trials returned to in‑person post-pandemic, some witnesses continue to appear virtually. There are litigators who argue that steps like cross‑examinations suffer when they’re not in person; Katz is less convinced.
“When you’re questioning a witness, you’re assessing credibility by looking at their face; instead of looking at their face in person, you’re looking at it on the screen,” he says. “I don’t know if you’re necessarily losing much there.”
Overall, the acceptance of a virtual‑first infrastructure as not just an emergency, reactionary measure but a deliberate and forward‑looking change is, in Katz’s view, simply the next logical step in building on plaintiff‑side advocacy.
“It’s moving in the right direction in terms of limiting costs for clients and streamlining the litigation process and making it more efficient,” he says, adding that there’s no “old school mentality” holding Singer Kwinter back.
“We’re open to changes. If it works for our clients and it helps us get good results for them, you won’t have any objection from us.”
This article was produced in partnership with Singer Kwinter
